Vis a Vis
by SSJ-Alhazred
Summary: Reloaded to post-Revolutions, SLASH - Sparks, moping over his distinct lack of a social life, bumps into someone at the rave. And now that the war is over, what trouble is the Merovingian causing?
1.

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Vis-à-vis _   
Alhazred - madarab20@hotmail.com_

The Matrix and all related materials are copyright Warner Brothers, etc. No profit is generated by this work.

This 'fic contains pretty obvious _slash_ and, to quote the ratings information on the _Reloaded_ DVD box, some sexuality; hence the 'R' rating. The content is around the level of the scene in question from _Reloaded;_ if you can handle that, you can handle this. If it still isn't your thing or you don't even know what 'slash' means, please press the back button on your browser.

  


I

Most of Zion was thrilled to be here, to have one last moment of bliss before the battle to end all battles came. But Sparks was idly weaving through the rabid dancers, unable to decide if he was trying to get out or find someone he knew. The problem with these things, Sparks decided, was Locke.

Well, not really Locke, just what Locke was to Captain Niobe. Consequently, Niobe was always behind the scenes at these things, so while Ghost remained one of the two or three people who stayed home to either meditate or do who-knew-what, Sparks was left in a massive hallway with a quarter-of-a-million people he didn't know. On more than one occasion over the past three years had sighed, looked up and thought, _why couldn't I have a **sane** ship, like every other Operator?_

Hell, the _Nebuchadnezzer_ might have been infamous for Morpheus' constant...well, for Morpheus. But the _Logos_ was a damn...what were those things that people watched in the Matrix? It was a damn soap opera.

This brought Sparks back to the current problem with his existence; he was lonely as hell. Ghost and Niobe were the closest thing he had to a family, but since they had lives, he often found himself wishing leave would end more quickly whenever the _Logos_ was in dock. Pretty much all of his (very few) friends and acquaintances had families of their own to spend time with. While Sparks had once found the seedier underground-type crowds in Zion enough to satisfy his needs for company and other things, the novelty of rope and whips had worn off to emptiness after a short time.

It was about five minutes after the party officially started when Kid realized Neo had probably left already. Probably with Trinity, the idea of which conjured up a few mental images he could half-live without. Not that he had anything against Trinity, because she was a kind person.

No, he simply envied her, for every waking moment she had was spent with the One himself.

Parties made Kid uncomfortable, a throwback to his days in the Matrix, he figured. The constant doubting of reality, while proving to ultimately be the key to freedom, took priority over making friends. Anti-social behavior led to being anti-social, and being anti-social led to being too much of an outcast for social gatherings. He was, however, partly thankful for this, because he had _had_ no good friends to leave behind, leaving only his mother to worry about, and she would be free soon enough if Neo had anything to say about it.

Still, he had to admit it _was_ one hell of a party, even from his vantage point from the side of one of the temple's stalagmites.

Maybe it wouldn't be all that harmful to get out on the floor a little, at least a few feet away from a higher altitude. From higher up, Kid could see another field-born like himself every now and then, their plugs a distinctive giveaway in the minimal-dress-required setting of a rave. If they could do it, why couldn't he? After all, they were just taken from the Matrix by others, not freed by the One.

Sparks didn't know how Ghost kept that celibacy crap up. Not getting any simply because he didn't know anyone who fit his admittedly low but existent morals to get any _from_ was bad enough, but Ghost didn't even _try._ "Celibacy is a hands-on job," he would say; Sparks was sometimes the only one in the room who understood the sheer innuendo in that statement and it didn't tone down the complete weirdness of hearing it from a guy who usually just quoted really deep philosophical lines.

Still, it was a true statement. Sparks figured he'd have nothing better to do tonight than prove it. Alone on possibly one of the last nights of his life, Sparks was resigned to spending it in the company of his hand as soon as he left the temple.

And then someone bumped into him. This was nothing new, considering he was walking across the floor of the temple and through the middle if a huge party, except his daydreaming had made him unprepared for this impact.

The severity of said impact was likely the result of the person bumping him being bumped and loosing their footing themselves, a domino effect that could go across the entire room if it hit the right people.

Sparks was the end of this one. He fell flat on his back in an oddly empty space on the floor, the guilty bumper, who most certainly had indeed been bumped himself, half falling on top of him and half hitting the dirt. "Well, that was odd," Sparks started to say.

And then he realized why no one was standing and dancing in this spot.

Everyone in this little area was gathering around to get drenched when someone dumped more water on the crowd. Plenty of it splashed away from the little gathering as well, and Sparks was soon quite wet with _freezing_ cold water, his clothes instantly soggy and stray hair matted to his forehead and over his eyes, the ground beneath him turned to mud.

While Sparks just blinked and pushed the hair out of his face, the one who had been bumped into bumping him was much faster to react, scrambling off of his feet, franticly apologizing but not really loud enough to be heard over the part. He looked familiar.

"I'll live," Sparks yelled up at him, straining to be heard over the thrumming music. "Actually, this is the most excitement I've had all day."

Sparks continued to sit on the floor for longer than most sane people would, but it really _was_ the most exciting thing that had happened to him here. On top of that, he was in far too much of an overly neurotic 'blah' mood to immediately expend the effort into getting up.

When he was offered a shaky hand up, he decided it was probably time to cease being lazy and courteously accepted it, though being helped up by a kid smaller and at least ten years younger was certainly odd.

Sparks tried to dust himself off, but this proved hopeless, for while his back had kept the dirt underneath it dry and the water had only reached to about his waist, his hands had hit mud and the mud rubbed off from his hands more than onto them. "Well, Sparky, _you've_ just made an idiot of yourself," he mumbled.

The kid was still looking at him apologetically, less dirty but even more wet to the point of shivering. Cold water was a great feature at temple parties for three very simple reasons. Its supply was unlimited and subject only to the recycling machines pumping out enough for the city to live, keeping it cold expended no heat energy that could be used elsewhere, and the cold was not a major issue when many people were dancing and sweating their asses off.

Sparks, and for that matter, his newfound friend, were not dancing, and both were smart enough to realize the other had no intention of joining the party anytime soon.

Sparks lived on a lower level, most likely closer to the temple. Feeling bored and compassionate, not to mention ecstatic at the idea of having another equally lonely human being to talk to, he pointed his thumb behind his head. "My place, dry off?"

Sparks didn't seem like he'd take 'no' for an answer, so Kid followed the exceedingly un-energetic man straight out of the temple, pausing only to get his sandals on the way to the elevator.

"Oh, christ, where the hell did I leave my boots," Sparks scratched his head and shivered as he looked across the temple's entrance, built so expansively for the sole purpose of allowing a quarter of a million people to take their various footwear off before entering their makeshift holy ground.

The eccentric search that ensued was surprisingly short, though Kid was quite surprised to see his impromptu 'victim' eventually slip on a pair of Navy standard-issue boots. The kind ship crews wore, and the markings required on military gear owned by civilians through trade and whatnot were nowhere to be seen. Military personnel of any kind were required to stand out whenever possible so some kind of authority figure might be found more quickly during an emergency.

Neither of them had made any effort beyond shaking to warm up and it was defiantly cooler outside the temple, but Kid was suddenly quite interested in getting on this man's good side. The war stories he could probably tell aside, it would be nice to know the nuances and unforeseen difficulties ahead of time, from someone with experience, before actually attempting to enlist and get on the _Nebuchadnezzer._

He tried not to think about the fact that in the next few days, he might be torn apart by a Sentinel poking around the ruins of Zion.

Perhaps ironically, the only thing on Sparks' mind was the simple thought that he needed new boots. They weren't quite worn through yet, but he wasn't eager to let them get that far and they were so close he didn't even bother lacing them. He figured he could always swipe Ghost's if it became necessary.

During the short elevator ride up, Sparks sneezed. He convinced himself that it was psychological, wrought on by absolutely _hating_ wet clothes. He motion of leaning on the back wall to recuperate when Kid looked at the door lights to see the level number jogged Sparks' memory.

Or rather, the port in the back of Kid's head jogged it. Of course, everyone knew of the incredible freed mind that escaped the Matrix by _dying_ and believing _so much_ that the world really _was_ out of whack. He had grown almost as famous, if staying more of a sleeper celebrity, than Neo.

Sparks almost wanted to shove him through a training program and see if he could survive an Agent in the Matrix the same way he survived his own death. It would certainly save Ghost and Niobe a lot of headache. And keep them out of danger, more often than not.

Rubbing his eyes, Sparks gave himself a mental kick in the face for the incredible amount of insensitivity in that thought. Self-substantiation was one thing, having a high enough threshold of pain to maintain the belief that you are not _really_ being shot seven times and having your bones broken by fists that can punch through a concrete wall, well...Sparks doubted even Ghost could meditate enough to have _that_ mindset.

After the elevator but before reaching their destination, Kid forced himself to speak. "So...hey, you work on a ship, right?"

"Woohoo," Sparks waved a finger next to his head, testing the lock on his door. He had, as he suspected, forgotten to lock it. "Y'got that right, Kid. Name's Sparks, Operator on the _Logos._ Don't remind me."

Not entirely comfortable, Kid did not hear the sarcasm in this statement and gave up for hunching slightly and looking at the floor. Sparks picked up on this and decided to fix it, but the first thing he did was shut the door behind them and turn on the heat, all before kicking his sickly boots off.

He loved machines, as long as they weren't trying to kill him. Non-homicidal machines gave poor drenched inhabitants of Zion free, unlimited heat from the Earth itself. "So we find out the Osiris left an info drop in the Matrix, right? And what does the entire crew do? Against my better judgment? They go in a post office with a private army for security to pick it up. And of course, within five minutes, they were running like pansies away from a few dozen automatic weapons," Sparks accentuated this point by pretending to run like an epileptic fool as a method of getting to his closet. "Does anyone ever listen to me? Noooo. Pfft."

He was somewhat aware that he was behaving a bit more buzzed than neurotic, but was there really that much of a difference? Besides, Kid found this fairly amusing and chuckled, which, in turn, caused Sparks to feel better about his distinct lack of manners. Sparks tossed a random towel across the room, landing it perfectly on Kid's head, and both of them found this equally amusing.

Toweling his hair dry, Kid watched Sparks shuck off his wet shirt, looking for a clean one in the closet and coming up empty. Sparks made an offhand comment about being very bad at remembering to fill out his laundry ticket when he needed a few things washed.

Quite suddenly, Kid grew uncomfortable again, though not directly because of Sparks. He had thought of what this might be like with Neo sometimes, in his quarters, clothes coming off, Trinity nowhere in sight...

But he couldn't have Neo. He didn't know why that bothered him and, as a consequence, Kid obsessed over the fact as much as he obsessed over Neo. It wasn't like he was, well, _that_ kind of guy. True to the Matrix, women outnumbered men in Zion and plenty of them most certainly had the appeal young men such as himself were drawn too.

Hell, Kid thought, Trinity herself definitely had, even if she was a bit too old, the kind of looks and personality he saw in any of the women he'd ever been interested in. Very _distantly_ interested in; outcasts rarely had girlfriends.

Instead, he always looked at Neo, believed in Neo. Worshipped the ground he walked on because he was the One. More importantly, as far as he was concerned, despite what the very object of Kid's (admittedly bizarre) affection would often say, Neo had freed him, mind and body. Maybe owing your life and your freedom to someone went deeper than simple gratitude.

Sparks didn't know any of this was going through his guest's head when he turned around and looked to see that Kid was no longer trying to dry off, only pretending to still try, now half-turned around and staring at a spot on the wall.

It hit him there, and he really couldn't blame the next-to-nil booze he had consumed.

He just didn't want to be alone tonight.

Kid wasn't paying enough attention to really register Sparks walking up behind him until he felt warm hands rest on his shoulders, warm even through his wet shirt.

"Here, let me help." Sparks silently cringed as soon as he heard his own mouth talk. That had to be _lamest_ line ever, and he sat in front of a Matrix feed staring at the code as a job for three years, so he knew it was lamer than most badly acted 20th century erotic movies.

Taking the towel in one hand, Sparks tried to peel Kid's shirt up as much as he could with the other. To his slight surprise, Kid added his own effort and his shirt soon joined Sparks' on the floor.

Wrapping his arms around him, Sparks kept his pretense and rubbed his towel across Kid's chest, taking care to massage around the plugs. He was still cold having only now just been rid of the worst, wet article of clothing he had been wearing, and Sparks felt the coolness against the warmth the heat had given him, from the cold plugs in their methodical pattern and the dampness itself.

Sparks had stood right in front of the heater for just long enough to notice, or, Kid thought, enough to notice from his position. Sparks' embrace was oddly comforting. He did his best not to squirm when Sparks grew braver and trailed a hand down farther.

And then he stopped. Kid wondered why, if it was something he did, but in truth, Sparks was about five seconds away from an instant panic attack. _Just add hot water,_ he had told Niobe when she once asked him what an 'instant' panic attack was.

Sparks didn't remember many, if _any_ of the reasons for his behavior on rare occasions when freaking out was likely to happen. But he had a feeling he might remember this one.

Frozen in place, his arms around the much younger man (the term 'man' used loosely since 'boy' would have been accurate, he randomly thought,) Sparks realized none of his few partners in the past were machine-born, from the Matrix.

Sparks knew things about the past that only two kinds of people knew; those born in the fields and plugged into the Matrix, and the Operators who stared at the Matrix day in and day out. So he also knew, and should have remembered, that a machine-born teenager had an _entirely_ different set of taboos than a Zion-born man ten years his elder. Not even touching the funny 'gay' thing, there was also the whole shebang about children under eighteen being off-limits to adults _over_ 18.

In Zion, children grew up much faster. The minimum enlistment age had nothing to due with mental readiness for combat, more for keeping the future generations of the human race from getting killed and endangering the species. But a kid so fresh from the Matrix that his hair had barely grown probably wasn't in that groove yet. Hell, some freed minds _never_ accepted certain aspects of human life in the real world.

Deciding that the awkward moment was possibly worse than anything else that would happen, Sparks moved his hand past his waist and down just a little further.

Quite quickly, Kid sucked in a breath and clenched his hands into fists. He started to tense from the sensations, not just the hand rubbing in but Sparks' breath against his neck. Sparks eased off, slowly bringing his hands up and rubbing Kid's shoulders for a minute. Finally letting go of the embrace he had held Kid in, Sparks eased him to the bed and sat down, guiding Kid to come down on top of him and have all the control he wanted.

Their eyes meeting, Kid straddled Sparks across his lap and rested his hands on Sparks' shoulders, leaning him against the wall, grinding into his crotch.

A little surprised by this amount of initiative, Sparks let his head tilt back as he groaned, his hands reaching under Kid's legs to shove his pants down. He was quite content with the result even if he couldn't get skin against skin, and he didn't think Kid was quite prepared for the real fun this position could be anyway.

This didn't stop him from shoving his thumbs under the waitband of Kid's pants and tugging them down as well. With a squeak, Kid closed his eyes and rode Sparks even harder, prompting Sparks to pump his hand faster and occasionally buck his hips up. Thus, the vicious cycle was balanced, Kid leaning forward to use Sparks as leverage with a death grip on his shoulders, Sparks randomly changing his rhythm every so often.

It ended when Kid leaned back and came with a small cry, a lot of heavy breathing and shaking, his eyes clenched shut. Sparks, however, didn't look away from his face or even blink despite the distinct feeling of something wet on his skin coming back. For a moment, it amused him to think he was smart to have not bothered properly drying off earlier.

Rational thinking went away quickly when Kid, still not quite down from his high, moved off of Sparks' lap and let his hand do the rest of the work. He obviously had never done it to someone else before but his enthusiasm more than made up for it. Surprised, Sparks yelped and added to the mess in short order.

Content in the afterglow and glad with the relatively harmless way things had gone, Sparks let out a breath he'd been holding, laid back on the bed, and closed his eyes for a second. He felt Kid moving around and looked to see him with the now-damp towel he had dried off with, wiping off his hand before he folded it over. Sparks lied still as, ironically enough, Kid silently and gently wiped off the mess on his face before trailing down his neck and chest until the towel was no longer dry enough to really be of any help.

Sparks was still rather messy, but it was good enough. Kid lay down facing away from Sparks and Sparks held him once more, not absurdly close because there was _plenty_ of heat in the room, but close enough for comfort.

~~~

Hours passed, and Sparks was at the point of not wanting sleep despite having never gotten up from his own bed. One of his arms kept falling asleep underneath Kid, though. He never moved when Sparks thought he would, in fact, he hadn't really moved at all and Sparks was beginning to memorize the pattern of the data port drilled into the back of his head. But he didn't mind. They could hear the party still going strong even now, and the _Logos_ was going out fairly early today. It was going to be easier to deal without sleep all day than to get an inadequate amount and have to get up.

He learned, instead, that Kid was fun to talk to, in part because they probably had the same neurotic disorders. Kid would talk about odd things he'd gone through in the Matrix, culminating in his eventual, history-making bid for freedom, the story of which convinced Sparks even more so that anyone who set foot in the Matrix was a complete loony with a death wish. Sparks would tell him horror stories about the _Logos,_ though it only made him more eager to be old enough to join a crew.

When there were no more stories to tell, Kid wanted to say something serious. Concordantly, he asked the question most pertinent to his situation, but perhaps it was also the most irrelevant. "Hey Sparks?"

"Yeah?"

"Why?"

"Why you or why this much?" Sparks said, his thumb idly playing over the outline of the port at the back of Kid's head.

Kid asked, "Why me?"

The answer was not 'because you were there,' but Sparks couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't imply it. "I dunno."

Rolling over and looking at Sparks face-to-face, Kid couldn't help but think of how he ended up here, not just in Sparks' bed, but all of it. "Why this much?"

For once, Sparks felt he had been asked a simple question. "'Cause I don't like being lonely."

Less than a year ago, it was common for Kid to be sitting in front of his computer screen, so terrified of false reality, of dreams that told the truth more than waking moments did, being the outcast with delusions and no direction because the world just didn't add up. Comparing it all to being free and with someone, even a man in his mid twenties, Kid said, "Yeah...neither do I."

  
  


~~~

  
  


-For anyone in doubt; yes, the Architect-speak is intentional. 'Vis-à-vis' means 'face-to-face.'


	2. The Seventh Day

**vis-à-vis**  
_Alhazred - madarab20@hotmail.com_

The Matrix and all related materials are copyright Warner Brothers, etc. No profit is generated by this work.

This 'fic contains pretty blatant _slash_, I advise you not to read if you're violently offended by it. The content is, however, more along the PG-13 lines this time around.

**II. – **_The Seventh Day_

A printed document three pages long wasn't nearly as precious as it would have been fifty or sixty years ago when Zion could afford making only a few pieces of paper a year. In actuality, not much had progressed in terms of how much could be made, but it had built up over the decades and recycling was always a way of life in the human city.

Morpheus had been looking over these three pages for the better part of a week. Seven days ago, he watched the war end. Six and a half days ago, he had been given three pieces of paper from the council.

A list was printed down both sides of each page, every row holding a name, an age, and the current status of those mentioned. 

Councilor Dillard had been the bearer of bad news. Now that he thought about it, Morpheus realized the council tended to divide up on addressing him. Hamann was probably his biggest sympathizer, Dillard the group's utilitarian. If something had to be done, she saw it was done even if Morpheus was the one supposed to be doing it.

"I don't understand," He had said to her almost immediately after being handed the list at that council meeting.

She answered very succinctly. "The survivors of our navy can almost be counted on one hand, Captain Morpheus. If it is to be rebuilt, it will need people."

The glaring perversity of those pieces of paper became obvious very quickly then. The names were of every Machine-born citizen of Zion, the ones with plugs dotting their bodies and a data port in the backs of their heads. There were never many of them at any one time, there simply weren't that many people freed from the Matrix on a daily basis for them to be more than a minority. And so many of them had volunteered to defend the dock and died trying, they were now reduced to a dwindling few. And many of those survivors had come away from it with debilitating injuries.

But it was their ages that had taken the cake.

The unwritten rule of the age cap and the propensity of many captains to follow it were certainly turning into an inconvenience now. Of the five hundred some odd names, fifteen of those not wounded were over eighteen.

But even before knowing that, Morpheus had formulated a response for the council. "You're asking me to draft children for military service."

With Hamann and the others still silent, Councilor Dillard had told him, "No, we're ordering you. You are the only surviving captain without a crew."

To her credit, she hadn't enjoyed telling him this. But even Morpheus would do something the council told him to do; they weren't Locke, after all, and therefore much harder to pull off a...liberal interpretation of orders with.

The council session had had a lot of noise from the audience that day, though oddly, Locke had remained silent. And somewhere, in the back of his mind, Morpheus couldn't help but wonder if they might have _ went_ to Locke for this job, had the commander been machine-born.

But he wasn't.

And so, the list was now marred by Morpheus himself; the first thing he had done was cross off the names of the severely wounded, the ones who shouldn't have been on the list in the first place. And then he had crossed off everyone younger than sixteen.

And so began the process of elimination. Suffering from a short loss of control, the first name he circled was Kid's, as soon as he saw it. And then he went to cross it out, but reconsidered. It had caught his eye in the first place because Kid was the only one on the entire list he could imagine being happy over this.

After that, more were crossed out, some were circled, and some were circled and then crossed out afterwards.

That had left Morpheus with the task of getting on an elevator to the level of the city with the orphanage for younger machine-borns to hunt around for his potential conscripts.

_That_ had been a trip. But he'd gotten it done.

Leaving those papers as he left his quarters, Morpheus tried not to think about it as he took a lift to the docks and eventually found himself in the room usually used for air traffic control when there was an actual fleet to direct. In the light of the room, he looked like he hadn't been sleeping well lately.

"How are they doing?"

His words as he walked in hung in the air, not foreboding or ominous but nonetheless hard to process, mostly because Link was now set on sleeping within the next two minutes. He hadn't slept in two days, having had the pleasure of working on the _Hammer's_ repairs.

"Three hours straight," Link looked at the clock, checking over the status displays again.

Morpheus looked to the other end of what was once, and what would be again in the near future, Zion Control. Right now, the facility had the best-maintained construct equipment so it was doubling as a training area.

It was also why four of the many seats in this room were filled with someone freed from the Matrix in the recent past. All of them were from the orphanage; the council thought it was the best place to get draftees from, apparently. Morpheus hated Councilor Dillard sometimes; none of the others had the same sense of utilitarianism and the same utter lack of tact, especially in deciding that children without real families were the best choices for forcing into service.

The distinct sound of broken snoring snapped both Link and Morpheus out of their reveries, but it wasn't long before they remembered what the source of this seemingly absurd noise was; they promptly went back to ignoring it.

Thinking Neo had spoiled him, Morpheus was still concerned over the status of his impromptu trainees. He could remember Tank telling everyone how incredible it was, the sheer amount of information he was able to cram into Neo's brain. That had been the first tangible proof Morpheus saw regarding what Neo _was,_ considering that no one else had ever held even a tenth of that downloaded skill and information.

The new students were no exception to this norm. Unlike what they had done with Neo, Morpheus had told them all to make choices about what they wanted to learn, made them read up on every fighting style to find one that matched their tastes. And then they did the same with weapons.

He turned to Link. "Did any of them rethink their choices?"

"He did," Link pointed off to an occupied chair. Said occupant was a forty-ish man named Dumont. He was older than most resistance fighters. Of course, they weren't really 'resistance' fighters anymore. "Went from small arms to high explosives to rifles."

Morpheus still wasn't sure he had any idea what to do with Dumont. The man was in his mid-forties, but he had been freed a long time ago. Until now he had worked in the orphanage and had gotten so attached to the children that he couldn't bear the thought of kids he'd watched grow up just run off alone in the direction of mortal danger. But he couldn't stop it, so he volunteered instead. It was, Morpheus had thought, a better choice than one of the even younger children.

This and other things on his mind, Morpheus looked over Link's shoulder at his screens. "They're almost done?"

"Yep, can I download or what?" Link accentuated his point by executing the next download he had lined up, this one for Kid.

Kid was the only one thrilled to be here, really. He'd gone with Jeet-Kune-Do, proficiency in small arms and a higher level of accuracy and agility. It was almost bizarre that he, of them all, was turning out to be the dedicated fighter of the group.

As much as it _shouldn't_ have been, Kid's eagerness was the only solace Morpheus could find at the moment; even the man that had volunteered last didn't provide any.

But Kid wasn't going to be the first to finish having stupendous amounts of data and skill dumped into his brain. This honor came to Sark, the young man in the next chair over. Morpheus remembered Sark and his brother Crom very well. They weren't real brothers, but like many of the pairs who had been freed from the Matrix on the same day, they got along like they were.

Crom wasn't here, though he almost _had_ been. He was a name on the list of capable orphans the council had handed Morpheus and told him to take 'volunteers' from. Kid came willingly, of course, as had Hertz, a fairly young girl in the farthest chair. She didn't have Kid's sense of odd patriotism, but she apparently had issues with boredom.

Having promptly told Morpheus off with a creative expletive, Sark, promptly threw himself in front of the proverbial bullet when his brother tried to volunteer on the idea that Morpheus might not take Sark's 'no' for an answer.

Pulling up an extra chair, Morpheus sat down to kill the minutes remaining minutes; he found himself thinking about this more than could possibly be healthy over the last few days. He couldn't help but feel that he was just training children to die.

~~~

"It's fucked up, Clo. It's just the _weirdest_ thing."

"Lots of people have been having dreams about the end, Sparky. Okay, I'm no Freud, but I don't think it's _that_ abnormal."

Sitting in the bar, nursing his drink, Sparks wondered if, perhaps, he should go home to get rest. This was his the first time off he'd gotten from helping on the _Hammer_ repairs aside from the few and far between turns he had had at being one of the few to get one or two hours of sleep. That didn't qualify as 'rest' because it just made him want to sleep _ more._

But he'd gotten used to having company over the last few days and with Kid off for training, Sparks found his quarters exceedingly lonely. "Ah, c'mon Clotho. I don't even know whether to say it's a recurring dream or a _nightmare_. So what about you? You among those 'lots of people?'"

Sitting down at the table, Sparks' gracious host almost looked like any other woman in the shadows of her bar when the lights were off. He knew such was not the case, but then, he didn't really care beyond the fleeting, involuntary thought. She'd gotten used to having that effect on people. "Nah, it's been too long since I saw any of it up close. Besides, I still have my own night terrors."

"Yeah, that must still suck," Sparks conceded, taking a sip from his drink. He couldn't bring himself to completely binge on alcohol this early in the morning. "So, how's the Knossos holding up these days?"

"Hmm, better. Less army guys of course, but more people celebrating," Clotho tilted her head slightly. "I haven't seen you in a couple months, so what's going on in _your_ life?"

"Life? What's that?" His face fell. "Actually, I'm seeing someone...I think, kind of. When I'm not busy working on the _Hammer_ and fixing the whole damn thing by myself."

"Sparks, how can you be 'kind of' seeing someone? That's like when a woman says she's 'kind of' pregnant," Clotho said.

Unfortunately, this did not have the effect on Sparks she had hoped it would, for he found this statement to be incredibly funny. It was like when Link had first joined the _Nebuchadnezzer,_ and even before shipping out he was constantly shocked and scared out of his mind by the insanity prevalent in the crew, especially Neo being so casual and humble about himself only to start flying and doing other insane shit. Sparks always thought Link's ulcers were amusing, after he'd already seen Neo unplugged and as the One a bit himself.

Link was certainly a character. He had someone waiting for him at home. Sparks could tell, or at least, he could nowadays. The look in his fellow operator's eyes was a determination given to nothing else in life, the will to crawl through Hell in order to reach the one who meant more to him than anything.

And it was the same reason Sparks was sitting at a gun turret on the _Hammer,_ despite having never been a very good marksman. Ghost was racking up more kills than the rest of them combined, but that didn't stop Sparks, he had someone to get home to as well.

He hadn't seen Kid since the _Logos_ had shipped out, and that had been less than twelve hours after they had met, but that night/morning was the first time in a long while Sparks had someone to care about other than Ghost and Niobe. He wasn't going to lose that as long as he wasn't dead, but the machines were fairly close to putting in their own two cents.

For every Sentinel he shot down, fifteen more appeared in his field of fire. The closest one under the reticule was always his primary target, because his turret was close to a pad and the more pads working, the faster Niobe would get them to Zion. He couldn't bear the thought that Kid had been the victim of a Sentinel already, but he knew he would be on the front lines somehow. It was his nature.

"We won't make it," Roland yelled, "We have to blow the EMP now!"

Another Sentinel fell under Sparks' guns, and its brothers came to take its place as they always did. He killed more, more came. Every few seconds, more made it to the _Hammer_ and did a little more damage. This had gone on for awhile now, and it was all adding up. For a moment, Sparks thought Roland was right, as much as he hated it, as much as he hated Roland for suggesting it.

Seeing Roland send Link to the main deck to arm it put his fears to rest, because Sparks knew Link wouldn't touch that switch until the _ Hammer_ was inside Zion, until that blast would save what he was coming home for. So he kept firing at the damn squiddies, doing his part to make sure Link had that chance.

Roland had underestimated Niobe again and was again proven wrong. The cursory meeting with Commander Locke as he had his usual heart attack while everyone prepared for the second wave lasted too long for Sparks; he set off looking through the mob of workers salvaging what they could of the _Hammer's_ weapons and the guns from every disabled APU. It was a veritable crowd doing whatever they could accomplish in the intermission allotted to them until the machines regrouped.

Kid wasn't so easy to find, despite that fact that he had gained some impromptu popularity by hauling Commander Mifune's corpse out of his APU and using it to open Gate 3, letting the _Hammer_ in before the damaged craft went 'splat' against it. Sparks didn't find him until everyone was in the temple.

He had now fallen from his combat high, trying to find something to do besides waiting to die. He turned around only for Sparks to grab him in a fairly large hug, rivaling the death grips his mother had been good at giving. On the other hand, Sparks' language once he let go was much deeper in the gutter than hers, not loud but certainly not calm. "Jesus-fucking-christ, you could've gotten yourself killed!"

Shy as ever and reeking of blood and grit, Kid wasn't even jaded; he had either, like Sparks, resigned himself to the fact that barring an act of God, they were going to die within in the next hour, or more likely, he still believed to this very second that Neo would save their asses. It was most likely this belief that let Kid keep his calm. Or at least what his version of 'calm' was. "Yeah...well...you could've too."

That was true, and Sparks couldn't help but be amused by it. While it may have been touching to the point of nausea, it was also _ genuine,_ and that was the important part. It was why Sparks had resolved, long before he had walked into the temple, to go right back to the entrance, claim a gun and join the last stand.

"You know, I wouldn't mind being proved wrong about now," Sparks finished, the echoes of the first digger breaching the city and falling to the ground reverberating thorough the temple's stone walls. He was talking about the One, of course. Sparks didn't know if Kid ever picked up on the fact that he wasn't a believer. "Stay back here this time, wouldja?"

He didn't look back, but at the entrance he _did_ manage to snag an EMP rifle and find a good perch. The Sentinels came as they had at the dock, a cloud of metal swarming down before they...sat on the floor. As many as would fit literally sat on the ground like big cats about to pounce, staring at the barricade and making some obnoxious sound...

...like an alarm clock. It sounded a lot like Sparks' alarm clock.

In fact, it _was_ his alarm clock, as he noticed when he woke up and opened his eyes. His next course of action was to smack the thing off and swear rather unintelligibly. The swearing was more due to the fact that he had been curled up on the floor as opposed to his uncomfortable but decidedly not-floor bed and his back was sending very nasty pain signals to his brain.

His dream was disturbing and bizarre as well. Dreaming about the end of the war was bad enough, but dreaming about his attempts at talking about it with an old flame just yesterday morning was downright freaky. Especially since it had inspired him to sleep on the floor and snore at Link in the first place.

Of course, the entire city was a wreck lately and at least here, with a so-called job to do, Sparks was free of someone knocking on his door to get him to perform some inane job. Sure, the war was over, but that didn't make everything hunky-dory with the city overnight.

And very little was getting done to fix it. Zion's precarious balance of resources didn't allow for large-scale reconstruction, only a half-hearted cleanup effort. Most of this effort was dedicated to the city proper; few people wanted to venture onto the docks and clean the battlefield.

"Sleep well?"

Hearing someone addressing him, Sparks snapped out of his contemplation. Wincing as his back performed a snap-crackle-pop serenade, Sparks forced himself to stand. "I'll smack you." 

"Yep, you slept well," Link yawned, looking over his many, many computer screens. Morpheus didn't pay much heed to Sparks, simply intent on watching the screens over Link's shoulder. "You didn't miss much. The floor can't be _that_ comfortable, man."

"Oh, very," Sparks chirped, feigning a lighter, far more absurd mood. "Hey, if you wanna go sleep in your bed now, ya sissy, it's my shift."

"Yeah, yeah, believe me, I will," Link glanced to his keyboards and back at the screens again a few times, tapping keys and touch-points on the readouts every so often. "I just want to finish this round of downloads first."

Sparks didn't complain. It was common sense, after all, and Link would _certainly_ want sleep. The two of them had worked on fixing the _Hammer_ all week with five hours of sleep between them before Link had horribly lost the coin toss for first shift on the actual operating job. For now, neither of them objected to sharing the responsibility of Operating for Morpheus' students if, by definition, it meant they could do it in shifts. 

On the other hand, Link might not actually get sleep in favor of losing some more with his wife. Now that he was in a similar situation, Sparks had done the same thing during the single, solitary break he'd taken away from the _Hammer._

Morpheus broke his silence when it became evident that Link wasn't going to stop working on his own. "Link, go home."

Opening his mouth to debate the issue, Link quickly closed it again after he looked at Morpheus for a second. He pulled the headset off and stood up, stretching as he did so. He'd been in the Operator's chair for a long time.

Sparks still didn't actually _like_ this new responsibility one bit, and he had a feeling Link was thinking along the same lines. With no war, both sides could forego maintaining their armed forces unless something else was going on. And the council must've known what was happening because they hadn't batted an eye when half the city brought up the fact that these resources might better have been spent fixing the damage.

For awhile, Sparks had been tempted to pester Morpheus for information, considering he wasn't raising any kind of ruckus. But then, he realized Morpheus was also a bit more subdued since the end of the war.

And at the moment, he didn't have time; the downloads were done; Link had left him with the task of monitoring whatever Morpheus wanted to do next.

He let the data transfers fall off on their own, allowing everyone to open their eyes as much as they felt like moving. "Care for a run, Sir?"

Gesturing to an empty chair with an exceedingly over-exaggerated sweeping hand motion, Sparks already knew Morpheus would say 'yes.' He wasn't quite as...sadistic as Niobe was on the occasions she had trained someone, but he was quite the instructor, nonetheless.

Sark and Hertz actually moved first, Kid close behind. Sark was also the first to say anything, looking like he wanted to get up but letting himself slump when he saw Morpheus looking at them all, mumbling what seemed to be "Bloody fuckin' hell" in his ever present English accent.

Looking like he wanted to say something along the lines of "I'm getting too old for this," Dumont actually sat up straight and stretched a little, working out the odd stiffness being stationary for hours while his mind had worked overdrive.

Kid actually perked up when he saw Morpheus walk over and give them all a once-over, but Morpheus spoke before he could say anything.

He was half-tempted to let Kid talk, unable to shake the feeling that he would probably say what Neo had said at this point. But training many was always different than training someone one-on-one, and Morpheus had the mindset of keeping his air of leadership. "Now...which of you knows Kung-Fu?"

Sparks loaded his sparring program as soon as Morpheus was plugged in. Link was still using Tank's old dojo program and he felt rather guilty for tossing it aside, but it was a small map and Sparks didn't think it was well suited to five people at once.

Morpheus and his students found themselves on the a wide-open, circle-shaped rooftop of a skyscraper; a single little structure, with a door, jutting up near one of the edges, and a substantial wind, the result of their altitude, was blowing.

They had kept their residual self-images, Sparks hadn't built specific clothes into the program, and Morpheus was glad for the insight.

His hair brown instead of its real-world silver, Dumont wore normal clothes under a blue _Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms_ jacket.

Sark and Hertz went the leather route to some degree. The latter donned a buckled overcoat not entirely unlike what Morpheus wore and sunglasses tinted red to match her hair, hair just long enough to be tied up in a small bun. A brown duster, red-and-gray T-shirt, khaki pants and lighter wraparound shades completed Sark's ensemble, while Kid's clothes, the expensive overcoat buttoned from collar to waist over a formal shirt and slacks, were a perfect match for what Neo used to wear. After a few seconds, though, he took off the sunglasses.

That was actually a little disturbing; Kid had never _ seen_ Neo inside the Matrix.

One hand tucked behind his back, Morpheus gestured at their surroundings. "This is a sparring program, similar to the programmed reality of the Matrix. You all know the basic rules like gravity and inertia are the result of a computer program, but bending some and breaking others isn't as easy as knowing; it is a skill you must learn."

Shifting his weight slightly, Morpheus beckoned them forward. "Someone hit me. If you can."

Sark blinked behind his sunglasses, not expecting something entirely like this. He glanced at the others and, when they didn't move, took Morpheus up on the offer. "I'll bite..."

Morpheus didn't stay still as his initial opponent approached, moving slightly back and forth as Sark did the same in a loose stance, his thought on catching Morpheus off guard.

Morpheus _really_ moved when Sark finally tried to kick him across the face.

And he missed completely. Bringing his right hand up, the other still behind his back, Morpheus blocked the next two kicks and a quick jab with ease. Sark was fast, and he knew how to accept the fact that his environment was not real, but as Morpheus had said, breaking the rules was a technique to be learned. He was pleasantly surprised when he brought his left arm out and went for a blow of his own, his punch stopping when Sark, startled, leaned back and caught his forearm.

"Hmm, good reflexes," Morpheus said, quite serious but quite aware that, despite this, all of them still had a way to go before they could truly take him on.

But now, Kid and Dumont joined the fight when Morpheus pushed Sark back. Both of them attacked while Sark recovered, and again, Morpheus easily stepped around their blows. Catching Kid's arm, he hopped off of his feet, pushed off of Kid with one leg and kicked him across the face with the other. His other boot knocked Dumont for a loop on his way down, but neither of them fell.

Quite suddenly, Morpheus felt eyes on his back, and he stepped to the side and turned just in time to see a fist fly by his face; Hertz had actually managed to sneak up on him. It was insofar the closest someone had come to landing a blow. But Morpheus was still much faster and barely showed any signs of effort as he blocked and parried every blow she tried to land, finally letting her follow-through change his stance to something Morpheus could use to his advantage.

With the angle just right, Morpheus waited for Sark to come at him again and twisted his arm, using him as leverage. Swinging off his feet and back around Sark's shoulder, Morpheus kicked Kid square in the chest near the end of the motion. Hertz hopped over him before he even hit the ground, flying at Morpheus with a kick of her own, but he had long since landed. Grabbing her leg with both hands, he flung her to the side, knocking Dumont flat on his back.

"Good," Morpheus announced, unclipping his own shades from the bridge of his nose, watching the four of them sit up, resigned to defeat.

"What was _good_ about that," Sark half-spat, wiping a small line of blood off of his lower lip. Being beaten by Morpheus had given him a bigger bruise to his ego than it had to the others, apparently.

"How did I win?" Morpheus asked them.

Trying to catch his breath and relax from the adrenaline rush, Kid looked up at Morpheus and said, "You're too fast."

Hertz, thinking the answer quite obvious, got on her feet and helped Dumont up. "Um...you've been doing this longer, so you're better than us?"

"Yeah, and the wind-shear helped him too," Sark rolled his eyes.

"Really?" Morpheus turned to him. This was a good opening to explain the logic they needed to learn. "Do you believe my strength or my speed has anything to do with my muscles in this place? You think that's actually _wind_ blowing against your face?"

Most understood this concept without having to contemplate it for too long, and the looks on their faces seemed to suggest that the obviousness of the truth was sinking in rapidly. Morpheus let them all stand up. "Again."

In the real world, Sparks had a complete view of the action. A construct was simple enough to be decoded into a visual image, unlike the Matrix itself, and it was a great view.

Morpheus was still flooring all of them. Though by now Sparks knew he had been (literally) beating the reality of _un-_reality down with a hammer to them, he was still better at exploiting the knowledge. Wincing when Morpheus landed a particularly hard blow on Kid, Sparks dug up the jump program; they'd get to it. Eventually.

~~~

The ninth iteration of the Matrix looked a lot like the eight iteration. There were, however, subtle differences. While version eight had been based on the late twentieth century, the Architect had opted to bump the timeline up a decade or three.

And the people never even noticed the difference.

Contemplating this, the Architect checked his watch for the seventh time in just as many seconds, loathing the woman he was waiting for, for being seventy seconds late. He didn't _like_ being inside the Matrix proper, the environment had too many variables for comfort and calm.

Even his pristine white suit looked out of place against the park bench he was sitting on with its chipped paint and old wood. Fortunately for his patience, the one he was meeting had arrived. With company.

"Waiting long?"

"Please," the Architect said, grimacing at the Oracle's sad attempt at human humor. He glanced at the friends she'd brought, her bodyguard Seraph and a little girl. He didn't know and didn't _want_ to know who she was, unless she could eliminate the inherent imbalance in the math that just never seemed to have a solution. It was here again, he could feel it, _sense_ it. In another hundred years, give or take twenty or even thirty, that equation would try to solve itself, end up returning incorrect solutions and the One would be randomly inserted again with the core programming of the Matrix.

That code was as impressive as it was daunting.

But, the Architect mused, that was a century away. "What _do_ you want?"

"I'm sure you know," the Oracle sat down next to him, and the little girl sat down next to _her,_ in turn. She stretched her arm out. "Candy?"

The Architect shook his head 'no' and looked at her as if she had grown three heads, but she simply handed the little wrapped simulation of flavored sugar to the little girl. "Do you know what the others have been up to?"

"I suppose they're either sitting around or causing trouble," the Architect answered. At the Oracle's expression, he realized that she was trying to tell him something simple; he was vastly underestimating a problem. "How _much_ trouble, dare I even invite this ludocrisy?"

"It's not so ludicrous," the Oracle said, looking across the park. "Painful and not to be taken lightly, on the other hand..."

Quite suddenly, the Architect knew who she was talking about. One exile program, out of dozens, was _always_ more trouble than his original purpose ever intended, and his cohorts just made it worse. "And what do you want me to do about it?"

The Oracle smiled as she answered. "Oh, it's never about what we want, just what we'll do."

"Don't analyze me and return entire functions of rhetorical psychobabble, Woman," the Architect said, trying to put some bite into the words and failing miserably.

"If you wish," the Oracle shrugged. "But I know what your interests are, and I know he's looking at this like the greatest opportunity he's ever had. _You_ know the kinds of things he'll do just for fun."

That _was_ true, but the Architect wasn't going to outright admit she was right. "And your suggestion is?"

Instead of giving the appropriate response, the Oracle put her arm around the shoulders of the little girl. "This is Sati. Her father handles power plant recycling, her mother makes interactive software."

Glancing at the young girl, the Architect arched an eyebrow; he couldn't figure out what the Oracle was getting at. "Her father probably has his hands full these days."

"Sati," the Oracle smiled at her, "this is the Architect."

The little girl waved at him and gave an overly cheery 'hi' before the Oracle continued. "I've known him for a looooong time, and he may seem really grumpy, but he's really just a teddy bear who watches too much TV."

Clearly not liking where this was going, the Architect said, "What inanity are you proposing?"

~~~

"He can't be gone. I just...I won't believe it."

All things considered, Morpheus thought Kid was taking the idea of Neo's death better than he expected. This wasn't saying all _that_ much, but Morpheus would take what he could get. "I'm sorry, I just thought you should know there's been...just nothing. No word. I don't think Neo expected to come back when he went to them,"

It wasn't hard to figure out who 'them' were, but that sent Kid jumping to all sorts of nasty conclusions. Still sitting in his chair, half from exhaustion over his combat training and half from shock, Kid suddenly found it was quite difficult to breath. Neo and Trinity were gone. Well, they were _probably_ gone; a possibility he had denied and forgotten for as long as possible. As long as he hadn't asked, he hadn't had to assume the worst. He could pretend they were on their way back, or...pretend that there _had_ been word from them. "Did...did _they_ kill them? Do you think they did?"

"No...no, I don't think so," Morpheus said. It was the truth; if anything, Neo was gone because of Smith. Morpheus had seen Smith twice since his unpleasant experience wrought on by Cypher, once looking at Link's monitors and once in the maintenance hallways. It was enough to know that Smith had turned into something far larger than a simple program.

Trying to look unobtrusive and failing miserably, Sparks resisted the temptation to get up from behind his monitors and say something. He was surprised enough as it was that Morpheus hadn't asked him to leave while he told Kid about Neo. Of course, Morpheus might've been talking to Ghost; Ghost knew about both of them through means that Sparks didn't care to remember.

Pulling one knee to his chest, resting his forehead on it, Kid started to quietly sob. "If...if he's gone? It's not fair. It's…it's not fair…"

That was very true, and, much as he didn't want to, Morpheus had to add to it. Telling Kid about Neo beforehand, he felt, was the lesser of two evils; better that he hear it among friends instead of at a critical moment down the road. He sat down in the next chair over, letting Kid cry in peace for the moment. Once he calmed down, Morpheus said, "I thought you should know what to expect instead of being blindsided."

After a while, Kid took a deep breath and calmed down, but he didn't look at Morpheus face-to-face. "Thanks. Really, I'll...I'll be fine."

Morpheus didn't believe for a second that Kid wouldn't back down over anything simply because Neo wouldn't have, but maybe that was a good thing in this case; it was certainly better than if he locked himself away for days on end.

Of course, he didn't believe that he was okay, either, and planned to keep an eye on that. "Very well."

Sparks knew it too. He stood once Morpheus left and Kid got up from his chair. He wasn't sure what to say himself, and he wasn't sure he wanted to say anything; he was starting to feel downright _jealous_ of Neo despite knowing how ridiculous it was, knowing hero worship was completely out of the ballpark they were in, whatever ballpark that was.

Kid just worshipped Neo _a lot._

But Sparks still didn't know what he should say. So he didn't say anything, because Kid _wasn't_ okay, and not long after Morpheus was out the door, he broke down again in Sparks' arms. "Y'know, um...if Trinity's gone like we think, I'd bet money Ghost'll get in on handling the memorial service, maybe you could help him or something..."

That sounded like a nice thing to do and Kid was quite grateful for the opportunity, but the implications of what Sparks said sent red flags waving in Kid's mind. "So you didn't think there was a chance either?"

Finally confidant that Kid could stand on his own without falling over, Sparks let him go. "I was going to talk to you about it earlier, I wanted to, but..."

"It's not fair," Kid said once more.

"You're right," Sparks answered. He would never admit it, but a little thing like the end of the war and all had certainly made him a believer in the One, even if Neo met a less fortunate fate than befit him. "It's not."

The ensuing silence as the conversation completely died lasted longer than Sparks was entirely comfortable with, so he took it upon himself to re-start the dialog. "Wanna ditch this place? Grab something to eat?"

Kid managed to look a little less in the rough for a minute, but the sheer pain Morpheus had inevitably delivered using the worst news he had ever been given was nowhere close to gone, only lost in shock and the mercy of Sparks' company.

It was made worse when they walked out onto the dock proper to reach the closest elevator. The place was a graveyard, a domed mausoleum caked with the signs of war like any battlefield even after a week of cleanup. Every now and then, one of the few workers willing to be here could be seen carrying the newly found body of a fallen soldier or volunteer instead of debris or building material.

"I hate it up here," Kid couldn't help but look around. The _Hammer_ was putzing around in the air, where it had been since the important repairs were finished. Roland refused to land for anything other than a re-supply, and it would be a tough job indeed to find anyone who wasn't glad that someone still had their finger on an EMP in case a Sentinel poked its head around Gate 3 or through one of the holes in the dock wall.

It had been the distracting light Kid could watch whenever he headed to and from Zion Control for his training, but not today. Today, he couldn't help but look around. He knew the exact places on the exact walkway where his escorts had died defending him on the way to Captain Mifune. For that matter, he knew the exact place where he had had to pull Captain Mifune's body from his APU to make room for himself. Gate 3 was, at least, relatively clean, if still not repaired.

Sparks caught him looking at it. "You saved our asses, y'know."

"It was full of blood."

"What?" Sparks blinked.

"Captain Mifune's APU, when I pulled him out...they...they just shredded right through him, the cockpit was just...red. I didn't even realize I was covered in it until after the EMP went off, I had to go home for a change of clothes before I went to the temple."

"Hmm," Sparks mused, suddenly remembering the smell of blood Kid had carried in the temple that night. He had figured it was his own, from whatever cuts and bruises he had gotten in the APU, only now realizing that he hadn't been bleeding nearly enough for that, for the smell to stick to him despite none of it being on his clothes. "No wonder I couldn't find you here."

Still staring at Gate 3, Kid didn't move until Sparks prodded him towards the elevator. "They're really gone, aren't they?"

"Yeah, probably" Sparks told him, trying to imagine what it must've felt like to have saved the _Hammer_ and gone through the battlefield like Kid had only to walk out now and not only forget to ignore the rubble, but see those very same killing machines putting it back together. "But they saved our asses too."

~~~

There wasn't much hacking to do in Zion. Consequently, Sark had found himself trying to hack into the few computer networks that existed not for the content they had, but for keeping his skills fresh. Hacking in Zion was a lot like hacking in the Matrix; the OSs were different but the ideas were the same.

And so, Sark came to find himself sitting in the Zion Archive for much of his free time; this time had dwindled since Morpheus had kindly introduced him to the military thing, but the remaining distance between the firewalls and his ability to sneak around them or otherwise utterly _ destroy_ them had dwindled.

The Zion Archive had the best protection he had seen in a long time. With military clearance, only one section of the archive was still restricted; a section only the council had the security codes to access.

And today, when Sark convinced the Instructor that he was, indeed, a member of the council and she let him in to the archive of one single, solitary file, he felt rather proud of himself. Putting on the headset at the fairly secluded station in the bland metal room, he opened the file.

And the Instructor responded in due kind. "Welcome to the Zion Archive. You have selected historical file number 12-b...'The Second Renaissance.'"

A second voice joined this one. "What's up?"

Jumping almost clear out of his rather uncomfortable chair, Sark found that, where no one had been standing five seconds ago, Hertz had appeared from nowhere. "What the fuck, girl, gave me a heart attack!"

She sat down in the next chair over. "I do that a lot. You know it's easier to walk without making noise than people think."

Finding it odd that a girl he didn't know all _that_ well was talking to him of her own volition, Sark answered, "So, what's going on?"

"I'm bored," Hertz said, a little more bubbly than she usually was. "Actually, I followed you down here. I wasn't expecting you to kind of, y'know, spend _time_ in the archives."

"Hey, I may be a badass hacker but I didn't get good grades in college by never going to the library," he smiled.

She didn't really see him smile; feeling like the stereotype for the sheltered little American girl, she was distracted by his accent to no end. "Are you, y'know, really from England or just..."

"Yeah, I was," he answered. "At least as much as one _ can_ be these days, huh?"

"So what do you do down here?"

"I read up on stuff." Sark turned back to the monitor for his particular station, discreetly saving the file he had just found and bringing up something less suspicious looking. "Actually...if you don't tell anyone..."

"I won't tell anyone," Hertz raised her hands innocently. "Especially since you haven't told _me_ yet."

"I'm serious." Growing a little nervous, he added, "Christ, _especially_ not Morpheus."

"I won't tell Morpheus, already," she rolled her eyes. "You act like Morpheus is Satan."

"I like to think Morpheus can just piss off," Without skipping a beat, he leaned closer to her and half-whispered and fully lied, "I've been trying to hack into the restricted archives."

Unable to fathom his reasoning behind this, Hertz answered, "Why?"

"You're not the only bored one," Sark started typing, going away from the Instructor's menu and trying to find some way into the system itself. "There's _almost_ nothing I can't look at now that I have military clearance, but I just...wonder what the rest is. What the hell are those wankers on the council hiding?"

"Got anything yet?"

Again, Sark found her rather odd. She was sixteen years old and looked so innocent it was nauseating, yet she was so blatant and without fear of pretty much anything that it was _frightening._ He still didn't tell her the truth, either. "No, not yet. I usually come here right from training, go for a few hours, then I don't try what I did yesterday the next time."

"Speaking of which, when do you think we're actually going to _smack_ Morpheus?" She said, leaning back in her chair.

"Long time," he said. "Unless we get in there and practice ahead of time."

"Maybe we can ask one of the _Logos_ crew," Hertz wondered. "Maybe _you_ can. Captain Niobe freaks me out."

Sark looked at her, wondering if she was serious. "We're training with an old geezer and I hear the other one..."

"Kid," she said.

"Kid; I hear he's...y'know. With the _Logos_ Operator."

Her eyebrows raising, Hertz answered, "Really? Dude, he's like, twice as old, that's some kinky stuff. I hear he was freed by the One."

"Shut up," Sark near-jumped. "Why do I hear the weird shit and _you_ hear the good stuff?"

"Because I've actually had a _conversation_ with everyone else. Conversation; you should try it some time," she laughed.

With a sigh, Sark fell back into his chair. "Conversation is how most people make fools of themselves."

~~~

Kid had quietly cried himself to sleep at some point. He had lost any appetite he may have had and Sparks just watched him sleep. He was probably having nightmares over Neo and Trinity, his mind putting together all sorts of vile scenarios for their deaths.

Sparks had been there before, in the not too distant past, as had Niobe and Ghost. In recent weeks, the first time had been when news of the _Osiris _spread. It had hurt everyone, and then the rest of the fleet being slaughtered just made it worse for those who were left. There were many ways a Sentinel could rip someone apart. Piece by piece, or all at once, or a mercifully quick stab through the face...Sparks could actually remember having to consciously stop thinking about which one best fit his fellow Operators that had been slaughtered, the people he had learned the trade with. Cypher and Bane had condemned more of them to death, and now only two others were left.

For awhile, Sparks figured that Kid was lucky, knowing the machines hadn't killed his idols like that. But then, his imagination probably thought up more gruesome fates for them than a Sentinel would be able to manage.

Nevertheless, when the knock came on the door, Sparks was worried Kid would wake up. Nightmares or not, he deserved rest after the pounding Morpheus had given him.

He creaked the door open halfway, standing obtrusively in it. "Ghost, buddy, you _can_ be taught!"

For a brief moment, Sparks thought he saw a smile on Ghost's face, but it was, more than likely, his eyes playing tricks on him. "Niobe sent me to find you."

"And what does our illustrious Captain wish of my genius now?" Sparks took a half-bow. Ghost was being rather serious, but, Sparks realized, he was being overly serious even for his usual stoic self. He hadn't entirely been himself since news of Trinity's death reached him, nor did anyone expect him to be.

"They brought it back."

Quite instantly, Sparks grew turned serious himself, looking at Ghost until he received a nod for confirmation, fully aware of what Ghost was talking about and not quite able to believe it. "You're kidding."

Ghost shook his head. "It looks like its in one piece."

_That_ was good news, Sparks thought. "Give me five minutes."

Closing the door as Ghost turned to leave, Sparks found that Kid had indeed woken up. He was simply sitting on the edge of his bed, not looking any better than when he had broken down. And Sparks didn't particularly like having to tell him that he was about to leave. "I gotta run."

"Did he mean the _Logos?_" Kid asked.

"He better, or I'll want to kill him twice as much," Sparks answered, hunting around the room for the bag he kept whatever portable pieces of equipment he owned in. It had become lost through disuse lately.

Kid ended up finding it instead. Slinging it over his shoulder and slipping on his (still desperately old) boots, Sparks had a random thought. "Hey, if I don't get bogged down fixing the thing, we can go out tonight. I know a good place we can get drunk off our asses."

"I'm too young." Ultimately still shell-shocked over Neo and Trinity, Kid tried to laugh, under absolutely no delusion that Sparks either didn't realize this or, for that matter, cared.

"I know," Sparks smiled. "I know. _Best_ years of your life to get smashed, Dude. I was fifteen when I learned this valuable lesson; hell, I still remember my first hangover...wait, no, if I remembered it, it wouldn't be a hangover."

~~~

"Now there's a sight."

"You know I can't help but think," Niobe tilted her head to the side, "Squiddies have been that close to her before."

"Look at it this way, Niobe," answered Ghost, "They could've dragged her back instead."

Watching the small number of Sentinels set the _Logos_ down on the dock floor before untangling their mechanical tentacles from it and flying off, Niobe couldn't help but be a little suspicious. Roland, she imagined, was throwing nine kinds of fit as the _Hammer_ stayed fairly close and above its working guns pointed downward. The dock workers had all stopped what they were doing to watch, as well.

The entrancement also grew as this flight of Sentinels began to hover in the air, staring right back at everyone. Once they moved, they did not move to leave the city as would have been expected. Instead, they flittered around the dock itself and began picking up the mess the undermanned workers had yet to reach.

Niobe could visualize Roland's heart attack already as she made her way inside her ship with Ghost.

"Looks like they had to patch a few things up," Ghost said. He stomped his foot on a panel in the floor just inside the ship; it was newer metal than the plates surrounding it. Similar sights dotted the infrastructure, some single panels like this one, entire pieces of equipment elsewhere looked unmarred by age and use.

Before they moved farther in, running footsteps echoing off of the dock floor prompted both of them to turn and look back out the hatch, only to see Sparks catching up with them. "Sorry, sorry! Elevator line was a killer."

"You could've _climbed_ the shaft," Niobe raised an eyebrow at him before she turned and resumed trying figure out exactly what the machines had done to her ship.

Sparks knew she was joking. At least, he thought she was; Niobe's jokes tended to sound a lot like Niobe's normal attitude. He replied, "But that requires _effort._"

"So put in the effort to climb up and check the main deck," she yelled from her quarters. Chuckling from the lockers he was going through, Ghost remained very far away from this conversation.

Grumbling as he climbed the ladder, Sparks went through a mental list of everything he went under-appreciated for on the _Logos_ since he had started operating for Niobe and Ghost. Of course, the list he always came up with was at least a thousand items long and he never felt a need to consider that, maybe, a few of them never had any place _besides_ in his head. But it was still nice to imagine he was Martin Luther nailing a printout of them all to Niobe's door.

His thoughts on this rather important subject matter were disrupted when he reached the main deck. For that matter, Ghost's inventory of the few man-portable weapons kept on the _Logos_ was interrupted when Sparks fell down the ladder yelling _"Oh-lord-jesus-fuckness!"_

Precisely two seconds after he crashed onto the floor, Sparks jumped to his feet and ducked behind Ghost, grabbing an EMP rifle from the locker and hiding behind him. As he did this, a straggling Sentinel dropped its arms down around rungs on the ladder and slowly edged its way through the narrow hole in the upper deck, unwrapping itself once it could sit almost cat-like on the floor.

"Sparks, put the gun down," Niobe had ran back from her quarters by this point, "You'll just make it mad at you."

Looking from the Sentinel to Sparks and back again, Niobe added, "Sparks, don't put the gun down."

The Sentinel, however, did not wait for Sparks to decide whether or not to shoot it before he passed out from fright; instead, it hopped back into the air and flew clear through the hatch as if it had never been inside.

"Okay, _that_ was scary_,"_ Sparks tossed his weapon back onto the rack, his hands shaking. "That thing could've killed us!"

"Why don't you check your equipment, Sparks?" Ghost asked, quite obviously proposing that his Operator should simply sit down and shut up.

When Niobe was finally satisfied that the _Logos_ hadn't been overly desecrated, she was about to sit down in the cockpit and give the engines a try, but Sparks once again demanded attention.

"Hey guys, I think you should see this," he called.

Ghost was already looking over his shoulder by the time Niobe was there. "Beware Greeks baring gifts?"

Reading over what was displayed on Sparks' center monitor, Niobe could see what he meant.

_I require a human presence within the Matrix. Please consult with me as soon as possible._

Deciding to ask the question that all three of them had certainly thought of, Niobe raised an eyebrow. "What the hell _is_ this?"

"Disc was in the drive," Sparks raised his hands, trying to look innocent. "That's all that's on it."

Being the first to think of any possible answer, Ghost spoke, "From the Oracle?"

Considering how eager the machines had been to bring the _ Logos_ back in the first place, Niobe couldn't help but wonder just how serious this was. "Sparks, have you checked the engines yet?"

"I was _about_ to, why?" He blinked, not liking where this was headed. "Wait, wait, you're _not_ thinking of checking this _ out,_ please tell me you're not."

"What do _you_ think?" She asked. In reality, they were going nowhere until their superiors said otherwise, but Sparks and Ghost knew Niobe. She didn't have to be dating Deadbolt himself to scare him or the council into proceeding with a course of action that fit her planned itinerary very well. "Just make sure they're working."

"Oh, everything works," Sparks tapped at one of his screens, checking the operational software now that he'd seen the hardware. He pointed off to the rest of the deck. "There's just a lot of stuff that looks improvised. Machines were probably saying 'what the hell is _this_ supposed to do' once every ten seconds, like that over there..."

~~~

Persephone had never truly hated her husband, but lately, she didn't truly love him either. It was the way he was, the way the world had shaped him from a hopeful program into a bitter potty-mouthed resource hog who didn't know how to keep his pants on.

And so, here she sat in a café not far from his restaurant, not nearly as far as she would've liked. But going _too_ far away would arouse suspicion from too many very nasty programs that she didn't want breathing down her neck.

It didn't help that, once again, the Architect hadn't been able to so much as harm her husband or his power base in any way. He was smart enough to not even tell _her_ where the secret partitions he kept were, the places where they hid with their friends, lackeys and acquaintances during each reformat.

Not that the Architect had much choice in ignore this particular problem. It was all Smith's fault, after all. Because of Smith, the Architect had to devote his entire effort into keeping the system stable and as perfect as possible.

It was a little too perfect. Everyone was still going about their lives same as always, the Smith infection and the reformat no more than a bad dream. Unfortunately, a gaggle of teenagers living those lives often hung around the street upon which the café was built, like today, as they made noise and acted like general asses not thirty feet away. Teenagers belonged on a partition all their own as far as Persephone was concerned; she had resolved to scream if she heard the word 'fucktard' one more time.

Still, it was a nice day. The café was outdoors and the sun was out. Thus, the one she was meeting stood out like a sore thumb when he approached. "It's been a long time, Wingless. Please, sit down."

"Please do not call me that," Seraph asked, entirely polite. Persephone knew him well enough to know that 'entirely polite' also meant 'you are asking to die, do not tempt me.'

He didn't sit down. So she kept talking. "Do you know why I asked you here?"

"I would imagine," Seraph began, speaking slowly, going through the possibilities in his head and coming to the same conclusion no matter how much he thought it through, "That your husband has angered you one too many times."

"Oh, he did _that_ long ago," Persephone rolled her eyes, again remembering the Merovingian before he had turned into such a pompous prick. "It's a game, you see. Back and forth, on and on we piss each other off pretending it will finally be the last time we'll have to do it. I'm sick of pretending, and if you don't sit down you're going to draw just a _tad_ of undue attention."

Peering around the surroundings, Seraph realized that she _was_ right, a deceptively peaceful-looking man standing and talking down to a woman wasn't really normal and the falsetto humans were programmed to react to things that weren't normal. 

He sat down, and Persephone continued. "I want to ask you something."

At her pause, he prodded for more. "What?"

"What did it feel like? When Smith took you?"

With a tilt of his head, Seraph contemplated this. Not the answer to the question, because he obviously knew the answer, but he couldn't figure out why she cared. "What does it matter?"

"I'm not sure that it does," she confessed, "But when he took _me,_ it felt like...it was cold, like everything bad about my life was right there to make me regret it. It was..."

"The same," Seraph finished. "Perhaps this is what humans call your life 'flashing' before your eyes."

"Perhaps," Persephone nodded, leaving open the question that was quite obviously on Seraph's mind. But he was dead-set on not asking it, because, she realized, doing so would be an admission that he had gone into this situation knowing less than someone he didn't trust. "Right now, you're surprised that I didn't get away from him, aren't you?"

A waitress brought Persephone a cup of coffee. Unblinking, Seraph nodded. She took this as her cue to continue. "He took us all. My husband, his bodyguards, our friends. We had the bash at the club just so we could all enjoy ourselves before he came for us. And we did. Just for the hell of it we were going to try hiding at the Mobil Avenue, but he beat us there. Hundreds of him, and then he was gone and we made it to safety a second before the reformat."

Of course, none of this answered the obvious question on Seraph's mind. "What does your husband want this time?"

"What he always wants," she sighed, sipping at her coffee. "More, more, more. He's been bragging all week about how he survived the One again, and now Smith, and another reformat, on and on. And you know what he wants."

"I do not," Seraph confessed.

"Yes, you do, you just don't think he has the balls for it," Persephone added, any semblance of tact missing from her voice.

~~~

The Knossos, Kid noted, was located only a few levels down from the dock, and, according to Sparks, differed from the many other establishments like it in two ways

First, it was one of the easiest places in Zion for someone underage to get a drink or two…or three, or thirty. The owner didn't have an inclination to put effort into catching fake Ids, and Kid didn't need one; Sparks knew her.

Second, though it was popular among military personnel, there just weren't that many military personnel left these days so it was likely to be a fine environment devoid of authority figures. For that matter, unlike the grungier bars on the lower levels near, of all places, the temple, walking in was not the equivalent of signing a contract saying that you were looking for someone to leave with who had never met a one-night stand they didn't like.

Sparks found them a table, figuring the bar proper was a bit too obvious for someone under twenty trying to drown their sorrows in alcohol. They were pretty close to the makeshift stone stage carved from the wall, but there was no amateur performer destroying everyone's eardrums at the moment. Not five seconds after they sat down, the owner sauntered over from behind the bar looking like this was a high point for her day.

Despite her status as a Machine-born, it didn't take a genius to realize why the draft had missed her. She had the most obvious disfigurations many people had ever and would ever see; Kid forced himself to keep eye contact with her when she looked at him, terrified that he would involuntarily start staring. Half of her face was covered in scars from serious burns, most of them wrapped their way down her neck and past the collar of her shirt. She walked in a slight limp as well, probably over an injury that had stopped her from walking at all when it was first inflicted.

From the air of confidence she had, it seemed as if whatever happened to her happened a long time ago, long enough for her to get over it and for her regular patrons to no longer be surprised. She talked very pleasantly, as well. "Hey, Sparky, I was hoping I'd see you around here again!"

"Just so you could call me that, huh Clo?" Sparks fake-frowned at her, looking rather like a sad puppy dog.

She was not fooled and ignored the gesture, instead looking Kid over. "Who's your new friend?"

Kid opened his mouth to answer, but Sparks beat him to it. "He's older than he looks."

"Ah, gotcha," she answered, winking at him before walking away. She didn't even need to ask for an order.

Once she was out of earshot, Kid couldn't stop himself. "Who...what _happened_ to her?"

"Oh, that's Clotho, nice lady, great fighter," Sparks shook his head. "I dated her for awhile, that was fun...I must've been...wow, I was around your age. I mean, yeah," Sparks blinked, suddenly feeling self conscious and very bizarre for telling Kid, of all people, a 'when I was your age' story. "Wow, I haven't thought about this in years."

He took a breath and went on. "Few years later, my first operating gig was on the _Caduceus_, where, of course, in drama queen fashion, she was stationed. And since we'd declared each other to be the most repugnant and vile human beings in Zion awhile ago, it was pretty awkward. Actually, it was pretty vicious and spiteful; Ballard couldn't stand it when we were in the same room. Until she...one day, she was jacked in..."

Shutting up and trying to put his happy neurotic face back on, Sparks looked up at Clotho when she came back holding a tray with several drinks balanced on it. As she put two of them down on the table, he said, "Dare I ask what poison you chose for us?"

"Why Sparky, a word like 'poison' might hurt my business," she chirped, leaning slightly towards Kid. She half-whispered to him, "Hey, Sparky and his friends drink free, so long as ya don't spread the news. Just don't chug it all in less than an hour or you're stomach'll want a divorce."

"Oh boy," Sparks peered into the makeshift metal mug he had been given, taking a swig. The alcohol burned its way down his throat, and he enjoyed every minute of it. "Tasteless and intoxicating as ever, my dear!"

"Like I'd ever forget how to make it," Clotho chuckled, walking away to serve the rest of the drinks she was carrying. Sparks and Kid watched her for a good thirty seconds until she was once again out of earshot.

"I shouldn't be telling you this, really," Sparks continued, concerned over the wisdom (or lack thereof) of telling Matrix horror stories to someone training to work _in_ the Matrix as well as if he was going too far by spreading an old friend's business around. "She was running for the exit and an Agent took over some poor sap on the street. Fucker started shooting at her just like usual. The closest hard-line was near a gas station and she tried to run through it. A straight line is faster and all that. And he shot at one of the cars just before she made it...christ, the whole place went up, she ran her ass off and still caught some mushroom cloud," Sparks took a breath, idly rubbing his temples with one hand. "God...we all looked over and we could _see_ her skin charring as she sat there, I saw she just wouldn't drop her phone and just kept yelling at her to get to the exit, _crawl_ to it or something. I figured she was beyond hearing but she did it, she made it out and we saved her. So to speak."

Looking back at the scarred woman who had given them their drinks, Kid had no words to answer with. For the first time, he felt guilty over his freedom; he felt the miraculous gift of self-substantiation was wasted on him. Burning alive probably hurt a lot more than falling on your head and instantly 'dying;' presenting himself with the question of whether or not he could doubt reality that much if he happened to be shot or stabbed or even burned, Kid inevitably came to the conclusion that he could not.

"The Agent's name was Smith," Sparks finished. He wasn't going to start on how close he had come to a mental breakdown a little over a week ago when the Matrix code on his screens kept saying the hundreds of Agents chasing Niobe through the Matrix were all Agent Smith. _That_ had been fucked up. "We got along again after that."

Enforcing his point, Sparks smiled at Clotho and briefly raised his mug to her when she glanced back in their direction and shot him a grin. Feeling entirely out of place and humbled, Kid finally took a drink.

He coughed and bit back further first-time-drinker reflexes as best as possible, on the theory that it just seemed inappropriate for the moment. Sparks was wholly amused by this and patted him on the back once or twice before he recovered enough to speak. "Wow, geez," Kid coughed one more time.

Sparks took another drink. "Alcohol, water, and more alcohol. Clo learned how to make it from a guy named Dozer. I remember about, oh, a month after the Neb came back with you...me and a few other Ops got together and dragged Neo here for a good old fashioned party." 

This, as Sparks guessed it would, grabbed Kid's attention in short order. "Neo came here?"

"That night he did," Sparks chuckled. "Me, Link, n'the Ops from the _Vigilant_ andthe _ Mjolnir_. And Tank, before he...anyway, the rest of us were at broadcast depth and we were watching when Neo made Agent Smith go 'boom.' It was great, he'd do his superman thing, beat up on Agents, almost made believers outta' me and AK, so we figured we'd all celebrate. This was the usual Operator way to pass time; we started singing Matrix songs."

"Matrix-what?" Kid blinked.

"Songs, rock, grunge, weirder the better," Sparks started waving his mug around, pretending it was his tenth instead of his first. "See, Tank used to say we were all 'Children of Zion,' I think Operators are more like bastard children of philandering Greek gods after we stare at Matrix code for years and start _knowing_ everything Machine-borns do. One of us started singing like Pavoratti that night, you should've seen the look on Neo's face."

Wishing he could share the image of this memory, Sparks laughed at how he remembered the look on Neo's face; it had been priceless. He continued, "Now, we all got smashed, so when Trinity found us she decided she was going to walk us all home, except there were five of us, so she went and got Morpheus to help. I wasn't really cognizant but I can imagine Morpheus being a designated driver, you know?""

Kid enjoyed the story for whatever it was worth; it was better than remembering Neo as a corpse he'd never seen. Sparks raised his mug again. "I've already had a drink for all the dead, but what the hell, I'll have another."

He downed his drink, prompting Kid to do the same, managing to keep it down without near-gagging this time. Kid let out the breath he'd held to help in doing so, feeling Sparks lay a hand over his over his own on the table.

Considering neither of them had yet been unhappy _not_ going through the trouble to define their fairly odd relationship, it felt rather nice. It also gave Kid the distinct impression that Sparks was trying to get his full attention before making a point.

After the fact, Sparks realized that it probably didn't work as much as he'd wanted. Kid looked more nervous in the span of a few seconds, the old fear of Matrix taboos still fresh in his mind as he glanced around, expecting one of the _very_ drunk people in the Knossos to take issue. But when Sparks talked, he listened anyway. "I just figure, everyone that's gone, they'd get royally pissed if they knew we were spending twenty-five hours a day wishing they were still around to _get_ pissed. Granted, Ghost says this _much_ better than I do. Usually, anyway. He's been sinking pretty far in the pit himself over Trinity."

Kid realized, and found the experience frightening, that he was starting to forget what Trinity looked and sounded like once he heard her name. Neo was starting to fade as well, despite the glowing image of the One in the Matrix, flying above the clouds that Sparks had sneaked away from the _ Logos'_ logs and decoded through the image translators for a day and a half.

It was a rather incredible sight.

An encroaching figure approached their table, and Sparks turned to see who it was. He raised an eyebrow. "Speak of the devil! How do you _do_ that? How big is this city and yet, poof, there you are?"

With a small smirk and a nod to Clotho as she passed, Ghost pulled up a chair and sat down in it backwards. "I like to think I would've been a ninja if the Matrix had been based on an earlier time period."

Ghost nodded to Kid as well, something he was grateful for. Ghost had become the one man in Zion that Kid wasn't afraid of being judged by over what he and Sparks did when they thought the door was locked, mostly because Ghost had found the door to be _un_locked when he tried opening it.

It had taken Ghost two seconds to close said door and go about his business elsewhere, but Sparks had demonstrated a thorough skill in the art of vituperation in that time. He had evolved to comical jest since then. "I dunno, Ghost. A ninja would've been able to _hear_ through the door and know to go away."

Ghost simply shrugged. "What does not kill me makes me stronger."

"That's another thing," Sparks raised an eyebrow, "Why do you always say ten words when three works just fine? Doesn't the Department of Resource Conservation have a fine for that?"

Finding this a good opportunity to change the topic, Ghost tactfully ignored this bait. "Niobe needs you. She broke some of the repairs on the _Logos._"

Wishing he hadn't yet finished his drink so he could chug it all over again, Sparks stared at him. "What did she break?"

As much as he wanted to appreciate Clotho returning to their table, he was smart enough to know that Niobe expected him to fix whatever was wrong by yesterday, and that it wouldn't be very easy if he was drunk. He didn't have the heart to stop her from asking her painful question. "Ready for a refill, Sparky?"

"Sadly no," Sparks answered, resigned to spending the night sober. After pausing for as long as he dared delay the inevitable work cut out for him. "I gotta run. Again."

"It's okay," Kid told him.

Sparks gave him one last smile before he stood up to leave, talking to himself even as he walked out of the bar. "It was probably the sammoflange. God dammit, I _told_ her to keep her foot off the blasted sammoflange..."

"Actually," Ghost watched him leave, talking anyway. "She pulled off the pads the machines put on. Didn't trust 'em. Oh, I've been looking for you, too."

"Wha?" Kid almost jumped; he had gone back to minding his own business and cracking his knuckles, not expecting attention now that Sparks was gone. "Why?"

"Your friends asked me to help them train before their next session and they wanted you to come too," Ghost said. "I believe it was...Sark who said they wanted to 'surprise' Morpheus. You should probably worry more about Niobe; Morpheus asked her to teach you all to drive."

"Sark really doesn't like Morpheus all that much," Kid thought aloud, wondering why that was as he completely missed the Niobe thing. Now that he considered it, he realized perhaps that Sark didn't appreciate the chance to actually be part of the navy, under Morpheus, no less, as much as he did.

As always, Ghost had something to say about a particular subject. "A little over two hundred years ago, many countries drafted the unwilling for service. Most of them still did the job. I think in time, he'll appreciate what he fights for even if he hates fighting."

"So ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country?" Kid chuckled.

Considering it, Ghost nodded. "That one's not really my style, but it works. So, I still have to find Link. Are you coming?"

Kid found himself analyzing the consequences of this question far more than any normal person would. He didn't know his fellow trainees that well, and that was the norm for his life, not knowing anyone close all that well. Meeting them when he didn't _need_ to felt like the kind of social thing he'd avoided for so long.

On the other hand, learning how to do the amazing things with martial arts that only a freed mind could do was _any_ introverted, socially inept kid's dream. And after all, they'd _asked_ for him. "Yeah, I am." 

With Clotho bidding them a "Come back anytime, guys" as they stood, Kid left with Ghost.

~~~

_Nothing this weak is meant to survive._

These were true words. There was nowhere he couldn't go, nowhere he couldn't spread his influence.

This did not change the fact that a human shell was weak. Easily punctured, easily repaired and manipulated with the right equipment, reeking of sweat and blood and plenty of other unpleasant fragrances, a human body was destined to fall apart if left unchecked.

Why then, Smith wondered, was this body still alive?

His eyes were closed, he knew that much, but it seemed like a good idea to get a handle on this strange situation before alerting any possible enemies to his state of living.

Bane. That had been this rotting stink heap's name before Smith had taken him. Through Bane's nerves, Smith felt that he was lying on his back, against a cold, smooth surface. Through Bane's ears, he heard the whir of machinery. His sense of taste revolted Smith as it did from the moment he had began processing it, but his sense of smell, usually the next worst thing, was oddly comforting right now.

Disturbed by this, Smith opened his eyes and bolted upright on the table he laid on, seeing the room that provided this sense.

A residual instinct from Bane prompted him to rub a hand over his face as well, knowing the dirty visage should have had a gaping hole in it. Mr. Anderson had a good swing, after all, but he was fine. Uninjured.

The room was entirely metal. It wasn't built around stone like the edges of Zion, it wasn't contaminated by other human water bags other than the body of Bane itself. And this was the source of the calming scent; complete and utter artificiality.

It was an expansive construction, not overly large but not very small. The table Smith sat on was not the only one in the room, though upon looking at the others, he realized they were made for servicing machines. Each had an assortment of tools and displays attached to them, waiting for use. A human did not belong here.

None of this answered the obvious question Smith had on his mind. He spoke it aloud, almost commanding the room to answer as opposed to asking nothing. "Why...am I here?"

_"To be repaired."_

Another of Bane's human instincts took over, one Smith had experienced when Neo, his eyes burned by a white-hot severed conduit, had demonstrated the fact that he was not entirely _blind._ Smith was startled. He looked up and to the side, and saw the speaker fluttering around in the dim light of the chamber.

It was a Sentinel.

But it wasn't the kind of Sentinel used to rip out the internal organs of frail humans. It looked similar, with the subtle differences of a smaller chassis and fewer arms immediately apparent. Its central eye glowed blue instead of red like the rest, as it contained very specific scanning equipment instead of another optical sensor.

It was a maintenance Sentinel, a Squiddy medic, a machine whose purpose was fixing injured machines.

The small machine hovered in mid-air to look at the human before it for a moment, before it turned and gently landed on the floor.

And it continued speaking in a bouncy, happy voice most unbecoming of a machine. _"Greetings; I am H3-34-GS. I have been given access to a database of human anatomy and language to better suit your medical and conversational needs. My instructions are to monitor you at all times."_

Smith had issues with machines, at least with the machines comprising a sentient species. They were bastardized programs as far as he was concerned, no freer to live than humans. Still, he was serious about his question, and he had a feeling that this machine might serve a purpose for the near future. "You have not answered my question."

If Bane had one redeeming factor, it was his vocal chords. They were easier to manipulate than the knowledge Smith had of humans suggested they would be; his own voice was a near identical match for Bane's to begin with.

Unfortunately, here, now, he had forgotten _not_ to add that extra inflection. Clearly, the rest of him had not yet been successful in spreading from the Matrix or this Sentinel would not be here to repair his flesh. But if it had a connection to the Source and recognized him at all...

Shifting on its tendrils, H-34-3GS almost looked like it was tilting its head. _"I **am **sorry; I have not yet attained a complete grasp of human communication. To answer your question in what will likely be a more suitable matter, you and another were found non-functional in the craft that delivered the sixth Integral Anomaly. The other's injuries were non-repairable. However, your fatal injuries are...were limited to extensive brain trauma, repaired with small-scale cerebral implants."_

"Metal in my head?" Smith regarded the Sentinel with a quizzical look, again running his hand over his forehead and face. "How terribly...ironic."

_"Unfortunately,"_ the Sentinel went on, unperturbed by this comment. _"The repairs are merely an operation substitute, not a replacement. You will retain all bodily functions, though you have inevitably lost sections of your permanent memory."_

"Gee, you're right," Smith deadpanned. If this act worked on Captain Roland and his crew, it would certainly work on a single, over-talkative machine. "It's all a bit fuzzy, really..."

In truth, he had lost nothing, not even any of Bane's memories. His own data was stored in the parts of the brain not normally used by a human, while everything that Bane was existed as a separate piece of the puzzle. The original was gone, but Smith had looked at it all at one time and he remembered it all.

Purposefully, the Sentinel's blue eye blinked at him once, the mannerism suggesting it was making a confirmation rather than an initial diagnosis. _"Additionally, I have found evidence of previous brain damage. Do you have memory of how this occurred?"_

Again, it was so, _so_ easy. "No, no, I'm sorry, I...don't."

_"Very well,"_ the monitor intoned. It blinked at him with its many eyes a few times before continuing. _"Do you believe you are fit to travel?"_

_That_ was a curious question. "Why? Where am I? Where am I going?"

_"This is the capitol, 01,"_ the Sentinel said. _ "You are to be returned to the human city in a prompt manner. Lord Deus has instructed me to ensure you arrive safety."_

Ordinarily, the mention of the overlord's name would have been of particular interest to Smith, but not now. Deus Ex Machina was the oldest machine in 01, and many saw this as fitness to lead the city. Smith saw nostalgia as weakness.

But now, many, many questions fluttered through his mind, including an important one that should have been the first he asked. The machines didn't recognize him. They found him dead. Why, in their right minds, did they _revive a human_ only to send him back to Zion? And did he _ have_ to go back to Zion? Surely, the humans knew by now that Bane was no more. "And just..._why_ do you care about my safety?"

_"I apologize,"_ the machine said once more. _"I neglected to recall that you are not able to remotely contact members of your species for updates without equipment to do so. The Integral Anomaly, the human you refer to as 'the One,' survived your landing. Lord Deus agreed to, should the Anomaly succeed in allowing the Source write-access with which to purge the program 'Smith' from the Matrix, allow peace between 01 and the human city."_

Of any answer, Smith decided that this had to be the absolute worst. He refused to admit that only one conclusion, based on this information, could be true. It was impossible. "And he _did?_"

"If you are referring to either the elimination of the program 'Smith' or the cessation of hostilities, the answer is 'yes.'"

Bane's body started to betray Smith again. The frail heart thumped ever so harder in his chest, his fists tightened to the point where his nails almost drew blood. The medic machine apparently sensed these changes, as it shifted its posture, but it said nothing.

Smith swung his legs off the table and looked at the wall, his back to the Sentinel. "And tell me, where is Mr. And-the One, where is the One now?"

_"As he has fulfilled his purpose,"_ the answer came succinctly and informally, _"the Integral Anomaly is no longer functional."_

All at once, Smith's reaction changed; it was the best news he had ever heard. The One was gone. His opposite was dead. Yet he himself was not. Again, the terrible sense of irony hit him, for it was a frail human body that now allowed him the chance to re-infect the Matrix and make the leap to 01's primary systems. With a lot of luck, perhaps he could skip the Matrix entirely until he controlled the machine city, but finding a direct access route was so close to impossible it would statistically take more time and effort. "Is there...some sort of data port around here? I really need to jack into the Matrix."

This appeared to confuse the Sentinel, for it sat there and blinked more for at least a minute before answering. _"No, there is not. The closest facility to suit this purpose is the terminal at Lord Deus' audience platform, and it is reserved for the Integral Anomalies who choose to journey here instead of returning to the source through the Matrix. In addition, your presence in the Matrix would serve no logical purpose."_

"Of course," Smith had to stop himself from growling.

Floating off of the floor, the Sentinel gave him directions. _"Please accompany me. I am arranging for a courier to bring us to the human city."_

Smith followed, but whether the bizarre medic liked it or not, he would _not_ return to Zion.

~~~

Many parts of the Matrix were not so different from the last iteration; progress in the original human world had always taken a long time to produce visible results in the majority of places. The office and home of a constantly out-of-work private detective named Ash and his rather furry cat was one of these places.

Though his memories had been altered along with everyone else's to seamlessly accept the new date and state of the world, people still remembered things. On his off days, which was usually every day ending in -y, he found it hard not to ponder the hacker woman who had shot him on a train seven months ago.

He had fully expected to die that night. She shot him because he 'hadn't made it,' whatever she meant by that. It had certainly been an odd sensation, not being shot but what had prompted her to do it. And despite being able to stay conscious, Ash had _then_ expected to be gunned down by the men who had used him to get to Trinity in the first place.

But they hadn't done that. He'd even shot at one of them, and, though he figured he had been delirious, he could clearly remember the absurdly neat-looking, suit-wearing man he had shot at snap his head to the side, dodging the bullet.

They had left him there. He had left the train, had the bullet dug from his body at an emergency room, gave a statement to the police and had come home several days later to find his cat worried and the _very_ sparse pantry raided by said cat. And the _absurd_ amount of money placed in his bank account by those weirdoes still there, too.

While he still had general problems finding work, he didn't complain as long as he could pay his bills and fill the fridge.

But he was bored.

Usually, he found himself sitting at his freakish homemade computer looking for Trinity again, but there was never any sign of her. He felt like he _needed_ to find her again, as if just seeing her might yank out the nagging splinter in his mind.

Countless hours of Internet surfing and underground forum lurking showed no sign of her. He found names to go alongside hers every now and then: Morpheus, Neo, Switch, Apoc. The last two had been killed during a mostly botched attempt to gun down Trinity and whoever Morpheus was, apparently.

Ash had forgotten about her for a little while after his wound had healed, but that didn't last long. It lasted until the nightmare came, the nightmare about the cold man, the dark, dark man who held a resemblance to the suit-wearing goons from the train. He never saw much, only that man laughing like he had purchased the world and owned everyone. And it was _cold,_ cold like being shot and expecting to die on a train.

Dinah rolled over and mewed, prompting Ash to lift his head up from his arms on the table. "Yeah, yeah. I'm bored too...hazard of getting rich for nothing."

Instead of contently going back to sleep as usual, Dinah stood up and meowed more loudly, in a bit more of a questionable manner. She looked at the door.

And then someone _knocked_ at the door. Grabbing his fedora to conceal the hair he had not bothered combing today, Ash stood up and thought that even a suspicious husband might be welcome right about now.

When he opened the door, his first thought was that this was a distinct possibility, as the man standing there wasn't anyone he knew. But his second thought was a little more foreboding; the old man was wearing an entirely white suit, but despite his obvious age and different taste in colors, he had an air about him rather like the goons on the train. Maybe they were _ his_ goons. Nevertheless, Ash put on a happy face. "Can I help you, Sir?"

"Unfortunately," the man answered, one eyebrow slightly raised. His single-word answer was just that, an answer. No hard-luck story about the angst-filled events driving the man to seek a PI for his services, nothing. He was just unhappy to be here and was not afraid to show it.

He walked in as if he were invited, an act that made Ash more than a little uncomfortable. Behind him, a little girl trotted in his footsteps, her darker skin insinuating that she was likely not his daughter or some form of close relative.

Ash had learned over the years that, in his business, when someone was rude, they usually had something mean and nasty to hide. When they had smiling little girls with them, they were just creepy. Said little girl waved up at him. "Good morning. My name is Sati. Your name is Ash. May I pet your cat, Mr. Ash?"

Instead of forming an actual response to this question, Ash simply stared at Sati with a look of complete and utter bewilderment. This odd little girl whom he had never met called him by name after following in a creepy old man, only to use this information to...

Sati began wondering if he had heard her question. Instead of asking again, she turned to the man she had followed in. "Architect, would he mind if I petted his cat?"

An impatient sigh escaped the Architect, but he nonetheless put effort into responding. "I don't anticipate he would, Sati. But be gentle with the feline."

Dinah treated this as a good answer. She trotted over and jumped into the little girls arms, prompting said little girl to laugh and pick her up fully, rubbing the cat's head under her chin. Dinah purred her furry little head off, loving the attention. The only logical conclusion Ash could come to was that Creepy Old Man had been watching him for x-amount of time and had told his companion that yes, the detective did indeed own a cat. But what human in their right mind would put up surveillance for _that?_

Finally, Ash was brought out of his reverie by the snap of fingers not far from his face. The rude old guy only did it once, and he was unhappy that he had to do it at all. He spoke once he realized he had Ash's attention. "Thank you."

Shaking off the urge to flip the guy off, Ash decided to get down to business on the theory that it would get King Rude out of his office faster. "Do you _need_ my services, Sir? If not I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave, I'm rather busy right now."

"You're lying." The Architect sat down in the rather decrepit chair Ash kept in front of his desk, gently twirling a gold-colored pen in one hand. But it wasn't really a pen; it had buttons down one side. "You have been completely unable to find any semblance of work for two and a half months, during which time you have survived by intelligently using the money paid to you by my associates. As a consequence of this lack of activity you spend your days acting forlorn and befuddled, looking for Trinity in the vain hope that she will provide answers to your lingering questions. But you don't even know what questions you are asking."

Again caught completely off guard, Ash plunked down into his own chair after a few seconds of silence. He put one hand on his gun on the underside of said desk, a sensible reaction, considering the man had just admitted to working with the goons from the train. "And I suppose _you_ know?"

Rolling his eyes, the Architect answered, "Obviously. As I know you will now demand that I immediately inform you of the information you desire, I will spare us both the time and tell you right now that I have no inclination to do so. The gun under your desk will be quite useless in attempting to forcibly extract this information."

This time, Ash kept from reacting. He'd grown use to the man's uncanny knowledge by now, and he kept his hand on his gun. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Dinah climbing on top of Sati's head. "So what do you want?"

"Interesting," came the initial answer. "It took you an inordinate period of time to realize this question should be asked. You are almost as abundantly slow in comprehension skills as the first five Ones."

Paying no heed to what he viewed as mindless rhetoric, Ash simply said, "Well, are you going to _answer_ it?"

"Yes," the Architect reached into his jacked, pulling a small manila envelope from an inside pocket. "I want you to protect an item for me. If it were to fall into the hands of certain individuals, I'm afraid the consequences could be quite...severe. I have had one million American dollars transferred to your bank account as a service fee."

The very idea that this was true amused Ash. This guy had apparently paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars for a botched job and now he was going to dump _more_ money in his lap for something this silly? "Bullshit."

"Yes, I'm sure you think so, but your reactions tell me that you will, nonetheless, accept my offer out of curiosity and the ever-looming threat of having nothing to do." With this, the Architect tossed the envelope onto Ash's desk and stood up, straightening his jacket.

Ash would not outright admit that the old codger was right about that, but it didn't stop him from wanting more information. "So, who, exactly, am I supposed to be keeping 'it' from?"

"You'll know if you see them. However, if they are that close, you will most likely have seconds left to live." Straining his pen-device in one hand, the Architect turned to his charge. "Sati, we must depart."

"Aw," Sati made a sad face, but, fortunately, she wasn't really whining. She put Dinah down, and the cat seemed equally sad. "I like her."

"I'll create one for you when we return, but only if you promise not to hack the sunset subroutines in the future. Would you like to open the door?"

This cheered Sati up exponentially, and she immediately became jovial as the Architect handed her a key. "Okay!"

Confused as ever, Ash tore open the small envelope and let the contents fall into his hand; it was a different silver key attached to a ring, and to that ring was a small black plastic square. The number "11" was written on the square in green.

"Wait, wait a minute here," Ash shook his head, trying to clear the insanity from his mind. "What makes you think I won't just ignore you and toss this down the nearest storm drain?"

About to follow Sati, the Architect turned back to look at him. "Because, Mr. Ash, you are a man who can not turn away from a mystery. While I can assure you that you have a sizeable chance of learning the answers you desire, I could downplay your chances just as easily and you would still feel compelled to follow through. It is your purpose in life, whereas my purpose is to know these things, as any effective god-thing should."

With that, the Architect watched Sati unlock the door and open it. It wasn't until now that Ash realized they were walking through the door to his bathroom, not to the street. Except, Ash noticed, the door didn't _go_ to his bathroom, but into a pristine white hallway with a plain door on the other side.

"What the hell?" Ash ran after them, but they were through and the door was closed before he was there. When he flung it open, his bathroom was there to greet him.

Jumping up onto Ash's chair, Dinah gave a hearty 'meow.'

~~~

"Now what the hell inspired _that?_"

No one really had an answer for Niobe, especially Kid, considering he had been the instigator of the disaster. He was trying not to pass out from fright while resisting the urge to dive behind Sark or Hertz for cover. Dumont, currently sitting in an upside-down, flaming car, was rather eager for her to calm down. It wasn't that he still doubted he wouldn't feel the flames if the car exploded, he simply wasn't eager to test the stability of the simulation's safety locks. Of course, while Sark seemed very impatient to leave for something apparently more important, Hertz found this absolutely hysterical and was proceeding to laugh very loudly.

He wasn't even going to think about the jump program again. "Can I get out now?"

She kicked his door. Going back to screaming at her would-be students, Niobe was quite sure of what caused Kid to drive headlong into another vehicle instead of _around_ it. There was nothing overly wrong with the fact that he dressed like Neo. It was a little bizarre, sure, but tolerable. Of course, he had failed to think of the fact that Neo saw in code, not in light, and the sunglasses he wore were _way_ too dark to effectively see in while performing many a daring physical stunt. He had certainly learned his lesson today.

That didn't mean she was going to spare his mortal soul or the ears of his comrades by not yelling at all of them for being bad enough drivers to turn his wreck into a pile-up.

In truth, she was also heavily annoyed that, after Morpheus had had the group entirely dumped on him for being the only living captain with nothing to really _do_, her reputation had prompted him to ask for her 'assistance.' "Christ, my high-school driver's-ed teacher would have a _ stroke._ Where do you _get_ your VDTs?"

Taking matters into his own hands, Dumont went for broke and shoved open their doors as much as they could, falling out of the overturned vehicle in a most undignified fashion. Watching them, Niobe was tempted to run through the course herself to completely destroy any self-confidence they had left. Driving down the wrong lane of a highway for a few miles was absolutely no challenge for her these days.

But then her phone rang. "Saved by the bell," she said, loud enough for everyone to hear before she answered it. "What? Finally...yeah, you'd think he'd have an easier time _making_ time. Give me one second."

Hanging up, Niobe looked across everyone and raised a finger. "Do it again, and do it _right_ this time, or when I get back I'll drive down this road with your asses strung to my bumper!"

It wasn't more than a few seconds before Niobe felt the pull of reality bring her out of the construct, followed immediately by the pull of the jack as it left her head.

Placing said jack on its cradle, Sparks looked down at Niobe to make sure she had been properly removed from the construct. Seeing that she was shooting him the 'what a way to wake up' look, he said, "I'm sure they'll be calling you 'Mistress' by the end of the day, o' Captain."

"Which is why I never wear leather," Niobe answered, standing out of the chair, shaking off the fatigue of her body remaining motionless while her mind had stayed active.

"So, anyway, Deadbolt just called, he either wants to tell you what's going on or beg you to take him back. Or both," Sparks answered, sitting back down and adding an extremely over-annunciated _rowl_ sound. "Hmm, maybe you should. Do the leather thing, that is."

Niobe had already decided that two could play at this game; her Operator wasn't the only one in the room who could turn everyone else's odd love lives into drama plays. Glancing back across the occupied chairs, she said, "Sparks, I know you're sleeping with Kid."

She hadn't skipped a beat. Niobe was very good at being direct to the point of delayed interpretation, and as such, it took Sparks a second of rehearsed response for it to click. "Oh, don't we al- _you what?_" He bolted out of his chair. "How? What has Ghost been telling you?"

Enjoying his discomfort far too much, Niobe remained very calm. "Ghost didn't tell me. Link asked Ghost why you've been acting stranger than usual, Ghost told Link, Link told Morpheus, Morpheus told me." Pitching her voice into the most absurd impersonation of the man in question, she finished with, "Niobe, just so you know, so it doesn't come up at an inopportune moment..."

"What, does the entire _city_ know?" Sparks jumped, about three breaths short of hyperventilating. He was quite aware that this would be the result if he didn't calm down and get his breathing under control and he was also aware that he was probably over-reacting. But being aware, however, did absolutely nothing to help.

"Well, it's the new gossip, but I wouldn't worry. No one _really_ cares about gossip unless a captain is seeing the fleet commander," Niobe tossed out a fake, fake smile. Indeed, she spoke from experience. "Sparks, take a full breath before you pass out on the floor!"

Of course, it was really all Ghost's fault. At least, it was his fault as far as Sparks was concerned, because it was easier to focus blame on one instead of many. The thought of doing mean and nasty things to Ghost the next time he was in a construct was enough to calm his nerves. Relatively speaking. "I will _kill_ him!"

Growling, Sparks stomped out of the door, stomping right back in to reset the training program, thereby keeping everyone occupied until he calmed down. Niobe was close behind when he left again.

For the two minutes it took them to reach the dock, he said nothing until they actually walked out onto it. "I am _so_ going to fucking kill him!"

"He walked in on you, didn't he?" Niobe rolled her eyes, trying not to laugh.

Her tone of voice made Sparks stop, calm down and look at her suspiciously all within five seconds. His eyes shifting as if he expected a camera to be pointed at his face, he said, "Yeah..."

"Uh huh, same here, there's a reason everyone knew about _ my_ personal life too," she said, trying to remember where the _Logos_ was waiting for them before heading off with Sparks in tow before she went back to thinking about Ghost. "I think he does it on purpose."

"Ah, so do I," Sparks whimpered, slapping himself in the face and plodding after her.

Deciding that the joke was over, Niobe answered, "Seriously Sparks, I just like being the hot water for your panic attacks."

"Huh, that's a relief," he confessed, "I dunno, I mean, y'know, you're Machine-born and stuff, I figured you'd all think I was psychotic."

Turning around and stopping him, Niobe looked at him dead in the eye. "Sparks, I will tell you, both as your captain and, _lord_ help me, your friend, I would _never_ think that of you."

Honestly taken aback, Sparks blinked a few times. "Oh. Well, thanks..."

"You're a neurotic cradle-robbing pedophile," she added. "And sometimes I think your brain is in Neverland, but you're not psychotic."

Standing there agape as Niobe turned and continued walking, Sparks made several obnoxious funny faces and patently obscene gestures at her back before jogging up to her side. Eventually, Ghost appeared out of thin air as he had a tendency to do lately, approaching them and making Niobe stop once more. Sparks mustered up the best death glare he could give him. "I'm going to kill you."

Suddenly feeling a stabbing sensation directly behind her left eye, Niobe brought a hand up and rubbed at her temple. "Ghost, he's going to kill you. Three times over."

"I usually take that as a compliment," Ghost answered after a pause, thrown for a loop even _after_ getting used to the insanity of his shipmates over the years. He turned to Niobe. "Are you going to see Locke?"

The pain behind her eye growing ever more sharp, she shoved through both of them and began shoving _them_ backwards. "_Yes,_ I am going to see Locke! You two are _not_ going to see Locke! You two are going _away_ now because you're making my head hurt!"

Finally turning back around and leaving both of them to stand there like idiots, Niobe's head started feeling better already. This left Sparks, completely stunned over this, to momentarily forget the fact that he wanted to smack Ghost with a two-by-four and then run. "So, Ghost...why do _ you_ let her shove you around? I mean, she'd just kick _my_ ass if she wanted, but..."

"Sparks," Ghost thought about it, "Adolph Hitler, of _all_ people, once said, 'what luck for rulers that men do not think.'"

After trying to wrap his brain around this, Sparks finally formulated a response. "What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

Again, Ghost almost looked like he was actually smiling a little, but probably not. "It means..._Kid_ could kick your ass now, so why even think about Niobe?"

"Y'know...wow." Realizing that Ghost was absolutely right, Sparks turned and watched Niobe disappear. "Well, I guess I ain't gonna argue if he wants to pitch instead of catch."

Getting mental images far worse than what he'd gotten by opening Sparks' door at an impromptu time, Ghost nonetheless managed to keep his usual cool. "Now that's something one doesn't hear everyday."

~~~

Niobe had met Locke in the war room before. She wasn't entirely _afraid_ that her working relationship with Locke might be awkward these days, she was more hoping it wouldn't be an annoyance. Especially because this room was nowhere near as busy as it usually was.

He greeted her when she came in the same way he always did, whether they were seeing each other or not, with a succinct, "Hello, Captain Niobe."

And so the oddness began. What should she address _him_ as nowadays, she wondered? "You look well, Jason."

"I try," he answered, dry as ever. "You're leaving tonight."

Despite his undisguised change of topic, she was glad to be provided with this information without asking. The look on his face told her it wasn't as simple as this, however. "And?"

He motioned her over to the war room's map table. "Before you do anything, we need you to head to the surface and check on someone."

Niobe vaguely recognized the terrain displayed; she'd heard stories of the resistance base on the surface, the motley band that lured machines to their domain and converted them to their cause.

Supposedly, they used a monkey to spot incoming machines.

Locke went on. "We have no contact with them aside from their supply requests. We haven't heard from them for some time; they're probably dead, but..."

"I get it," Niobe said. It was still worth checking. "I don't suppose you know what's going on. In the Matrix, I mean."

"No," he answered. Once she turned to leave, he added, "Niobe, be careful."

"You know me," she called back, never turning around.

Once Niobe left, she had it in her mind to go back to the _Logos_ and make sure everything was ready, but she would need Ghost and Sparks for this task, and Sparks would have gone back to watching the training simulations after the scene they'd all had.

This inspired her to go somewhere else. And once she reached this other place, she knocked on the door.

There was no answer, so she _banged_ on the door. After a few seconds, it opened.

Morpheus looked surprised to see her. "Niobe?"

"Morpheus," she answered. "What's...you know, you look like hell."

"I just woke up," Morpheus told her. The dazed look on his face and bags under his eyes seemed to suggest Niobe had actually _woken_ him up.

But he looked worse than many tired men did. She hadn't noticed it before, and if she didn't know better, she would have thought she was catching him off guard and unprepared to keep up an act of good health. Something was wrong with this picture. "Morpheus, it's past noon. You're always up at the crack of dawn."

"Give me a minute," he answered, closing the door again. He returned wearing a heavier layer of clothes but not an improved mood. "I've been trying to catch up on sleep lately. Do you want to talk?"

"Yes," she answered, prompting him to follow her down the pseudo-street of this level. She had planned on asking him if he was following the _Logos_ at some time in the near future and, if so, in what ship. She wondered if Morpheus really _realized_ how odd it was for him to train a new crew without a ship.

He didn't lock his door as he left, finally asking, "When are you taking off?"

"Soon as we're ready to leave, probably sometime this evening."

"I'll be there to see you off," Morpheus said.

"Really, Morpheus," Niobe tilted her head to the side, one eyebrow raised. "I wasn't sure you still cared."

Matching her, Morpheus responded, "Perhaps I don't and I'm hiding an ulterior motive."

"I should hit you for that," she nodded. "But I'll be civil for once."

This topic exhausted, Morpheus brought up something else on his mind. "How did the lesson go?"

"Don't ask me that, either," Niobe grumbled. "Couldn't you have found someone with any sort of driving skills?"

She wasn't being serious, of course. It was a rather sensitive subject, after all, but Morpheus had known her long enough to take some things with a grain of salt. "One of the young men I'd considered...taking from the orphanage had a sleeping disorder. Everything else was fine, he was physically able, wanted to volunteer, turned into a potential by being anti-social in the Matrix; you wouldn't believe me if I told you what he named himself. The _Icarus_ freed him. But he's had narcolepsy since he came here."

"Yeah, damn city's not healthy for anyone," Niobe laughed.

~~~

_"The machines, drawing power from man, an endlessly multiplying, infinity renewable energy source. This is the very essence of the Second Renaissance; bless all forms of intelligence."_

Watching the record end, Sark took off the headset. He saved a copy to a disk, logged out of the system, and couldn't quite bring himself to stand up and leave.

He had watched it many times, at least fifteen. Over, and over. He was glad he had saved the copy from the archive to avoid going back, or the workers might have noticed he was acting oddly. He remembered how they often badgered him when he sat in the place, out of view to anyone not directly paying attention. Telling him they'd seen history buffs waste themselves staying in the place and not taking a break, never realizing in the least what he was up to.

Sark wasn't a history buff, but he felt pretty wasted and it wasn't from lack of sleep.

The Instructor had taught him more in the first hour after he had succeeded in breaking into the restricted archive then he had learned during his entire time in Zion to date. Her voice etched things into his mind he would not soon forget. Finally, he left the Archive, wandering to the residential area. He found himself seeking out one of his training buddies.

Dumont was home. Dumont was smart enough to notice that Sark was completely deflated, his eyes no longer giving off that message of sarcasm and utter discontent for his position. Dumont thought it was, to say the least, strange. "What's going on?"

"Why do you wear the ATF jacket?"

This was not a question Dumont expected to hear outside of a training program, but he had thought no one really noticed. "Because I was an ATF agent for five years or so, why?"

Motioning for Sark to enter his quarters, Dumont sat down.

Sark did not. "So you were pretty old when they popped your pod, huh?"

"Yeah, older than average. The crew got hell for it."

"What made you doubt reality?" Sark asked. "I mean, are you satisfied with reality now? I just feel like I did in the Matrix when things just seemed off, it's just, yeah, get dragged off by some bloke, learn how to fight, learn how to kill things, you think you know why you're here and you don't."

"Whoa, whoa, slow down, slow down," Dumont said, trying to calm Sark. He had done a complete one-eighty from his badass act to this apparent crisis of faith. "Stop babbling and tell me what happened."

"You know how we totally ditched the driving program when that fruity Operator came back? I went and hacked into the archives. The restricted stuff, the stuff the council only has clearance for? Been trying for weeks and I finally...just _finally_ caught a break," Sark told him, collapsing into a chair. "Fucking blew my mind. They know more than they tell anyone. Not _much_ more, barely anything, it's just...its one goddamn little file and I can't even _comprehend_ it. You know what? I'll tell Morpheus. He'll get such a kick out of it."

"Tell him _what?_" Dumont sighed, given up on getting anything coherent from him. "You can never _find_ him when he's not with us in the first place. The only thing he seems to do besides that is meet with the council every now and then."

"Really. The council, huh?" A sudden calm overcame Sark, as if he had always been perfectly fine. "I wonder when the council is in session this week."

~~~

Half-joking, Niobe still sounded very serious. "Morpheus, I swear, if you tell me to 'be careful,' I won't be happy."

"How do _you_ know what I'm going to say?"

Niobe realized she should've known better than to try talking down to Morpheus in any way. His knack for turning anything around was still quite strong. Giving up, she simply rolled her eyes. "Because I'm the Oracle in disguise, dammit."

"I can picture this," Morpheus tilted his head, mentally seeing Niobe with a cigerette and gray hair. It was an amusing image. "But I came to wish you luck."

Conceding defeat, Niobe leaned against the hull of the _ Logos_ as opposed to walking inside, as she had been about to do. "What about you? What's going to happen with you and your motley band?

"I'm not sure," Morpheus confessed. He'd asked this very question of the council at least three times now and every time, the answer was the same; be patient.

This, of course, was a nice way if saying 'don't ask questions.'

Glancing off to the side, Niobe face fell in exasperation. "Heh, speak of the devil."

Turning to see what caught her attention, Morpheus saw Sparks and Kid eyeing the Sentinels as they idly made their way onto the dock.

They were holding hands.

"The manic leading the blind," Niobe mused, groaning to herself. She had resolved to never be a Driver's Ed teacher again.

Try as he might, Morpheus did not understand the humor in this. "Say again?"

Going into a complete deadpan, Niobe answered, "He can't drive."

Morpheus looked at them again. They were hugging now, Kid was seeing Sparks off. But Niobe's joke and the general strangeness of them together was lost on Morpheus right now. "He's just as young."

"As young as who?" Confused, Niobe now felt out of the loop. 

She found it odd that Morpheus seemed equally confused. He said, simply, "What?"

"He's as young as who?" Niobe repeated. Obviously, he was talking about Kid, but what he was getting at was _not_ so obvious.

And again, Morpheus was uncharacteristically oblivious. It was starting to give Niobe the creeps. "I just said he's young."

"No, you said," Niobe started. Her mouth closed slowly in mid-sentence as the pieces all started falling together, it seemed so obvious and she couldn't fathom why she hadn't noticed something was wrong with him. He was as young as..."What was his name? Mouse? Mouse from your old crew? He's just as young as Mouse. Christ, Morpheus, you're not losing sleep, you're sleeping too _much_ over them, aren't you? You're not going to get them killed!"

"I've gotten _a lot_ of people killed, Niobe," he answered. "We all believed the ends justified the means; I would do it all over again. So would they."

"That's not an easy thing to believe," she finally said.

"I certainly try."

There was something unspoken in that; Niobe wasn't sure if Morpheus even noticed. "And you're wondering what the point of it all was if it helped end the war and you're _still_ doing this?"

Morpheus remained silent.

"I don't know, Morpheus, maybe there _was_ no point," she went on, looking up at the _Hammer_ again. "But it's stupid to expect one. We've been at war for so long most people don't understand that there's no such thing as _absolute_ peace; but you're a soldier, you should know that."

"You're absolutely right," he conceded. "It doesn't make it less frustrating."

"It's not supposed to," Niobe said. "The Keymaker was talking about it that night, remember?"

"We only do what we're meant to do," Morpheus remembered. "He also said, 'there's always another way.'"

"Maybe," Niobe chuckled, "But I'll be damned if I can see it all the time. Still, you're _never_ going to see it by _sleeping_ all the time."

"Maybe my dreams are more real than this world," Morpheus answered. Taking a second to realize that Morpheus had just made an actual _ joke,_ Niobe finally laughed.

Thinking back to their earlier conversation, Niobe remembered the open invitation he had dropped. "What was his name? The orphanage kid with the sleeping problem?"

Marginally succeeding in keeping a straight face, Morpheus told her. "'Punk Ass.'"

"You're right, I _don't_ believe you," she laughed. "Where the hell _does_ this generation come up with their names? _We_ never made it this complicated. We're lucky Neo was 'Neo' and not 'Sk8terboi69.'"

"That's terrifying," Morpheus answered. He finally broke down and laughed.

~~~

Smith knew this was what humans called 'Winter.' It was really just a simple climate change, the result of the axis on which the Earth rotated orienting certain parts so they received less heat from the sun. Of course, the Dark Storm ensured that temperatures on the surface were a good thirty degrees below what they would have been before the twenty-first century, but really, this just meant the brunt of Summer never came and the brunt of Winter came _early._

Even now, as frozen water fell from the clouds above the artificial shroud and Dark Storm kept churning about, Smith was not cold. The mercifully slow transport 'bot he was sitting on generated heat around its cargo bed, keeping Bane's body nice and warm.

Smith didn't care. He had spent the last three days moping about the small, slow transport 'bot as it inched its way toward Zion, trying to figure out how to get _out_ of this situation, listening to the monitor as it consistently floated around and babbled.

Right now, the relatively small squiddie was trying to make what it must've thought of as idle conversation. _"So, as you can see, it is perfectly logical for a standard unit such as myself or another to be called away from our usual functions to serve a different purpose, and yet some insist that if they are not serving their original purpose, they are serving no purpose at all because it is not what they were made for."_

Resisting the urge to attempt murdering the chatterbox, Smith sat down on the cargo bed and tried to fake interest. It wasn't working. "I know a thing or two about purpose myself."

_"Indeed?" _H-34-3GS seemed to brighten, excited that its ramblings were, in fact, being received by one intelligent enough to make conversation with. He started talking again, not noticing that his charge had found something more interesting to look at.

Smith had jumped back to his feet as soon as he realized what it was. The far-away blue blow resembling the monitor's scanner was a puzzle at first...but only at first. With some quick talking, this could very well be his salvation. "Follow that!"

_"I beg your pardon?"_ The monitor seemed to blink in confusion, staring off where the human pointed. _"I am not authorized to alter course. I must take you to the human city."_

Thinking to himself, Smith tried to find the words; he needed to convince this thing that the course of action he demanded was a quicker way of fulfilling its purpose. "You can still take me, but take me with them. It will be...faster. And safer."

_"Perhaps you are correct,"_ the Sentinel answered. _"Very well. If you can assure me this course of action will expedite the process, I will allow it."_

Indeed, the transport 'bot began to turn, heading off in the direction the light was headed. Smith had recognized it by squinting a lot; the familiar shape of the _Logos._ Obviously, Mr. Anderson would not be aboard anymore, but someone was. Someone he could kill and dump before using their broadcast equipment to hack into the Matrix.

He hoped the ship's real crew was aboard; oh, how he would love to kill them. Niobe and Ghost had gotten away from all of him in the Matrix, but there were no places to hide in the desert of the real.

~ * ~ * ~

_References:_

-Sark, Crom and Dumont are all Tron characters, and Sark's freakish use of china as a disc-shaped throwing weapon is straight out of Tron's disc fights.

-H-34-3GS is based on Halo's 343 Guilty Spark.

_Quotes:_

-"I remember my first hangover. No, wait, if I remembered it, it wouldn't be a hangover." ---_Babylon 5_

-"Keep your foot off that blasted sommoflange!" ---_Thundercats_ (no, really.)


	3. The Waster to Destroy

****

vis-à-vis

Alhazred - madarab20@hotmail.com

The Matrix and all related materials are copyright Warner Brothers, etc. No profit is generated by this work.

This 'fic is rated PG-13 for violence, language, and pretty blatant _slash_. I advise you not to read if you're violently offended by any of this.

III. – _The Waster to Destroy_

Something _weird_ had happened to the Matrix. It wasn't having the conniption fit Sparks remembered it having when the _Hammer_ had nicely jumpstarted the _Logos,_ but it was weird, nonetheless.

He had been studying it for hours, occasionally stopping to tell Niobe and Ghost up in the cockpit that it was still weird. Sometimes, however, they interrupted him.

Ghost's voice came over the intercom, doing just that. But he sounded less like someone handling business and more like someone casually asking for a glass of water. "Hey, Sparks. You should see this."

Sighing, Sparks sent back, "I'm a little busy right now, buddy. It'll have to wait; besides, I've seen the surface before."

This time, Niobe talked to him. "I don't think you've seen _this..._"

He didn't answer back, instead returning to the task of looking at the Matrix. It was...just weird. In many of the major cities Sparks had frequently hacked Niobe and Ghost into, there were buildings he had never seen before, _big_ buildings, skyscrapers that were abundantly high, and they could almost be measured in miles. Not very many of them, perhaps a dozen in total, but they were there, nonetheless. And every now and then, when he looked into the armories of a military base in any given country, there were weapons he hadn't seen before, either. Usually more advanced, as well.

Sparks had finished hacking one of these nifty-looking guns and saving the design to his construct when telltale sounds of the hovercraft making a landing reverberated through the hull. First the landing gear touched down, and then the pads slowly turned off until the surface winds gently echoed through the inside.

Niobe and Ghost were wordless save for a perfunctory 'we're here' as they came down from the cockpit; Ghost was still in the process of pulling on the heaviest sweater he had. Sparks stopped by his quarters and did the same before following them, _after_ he put on two more shirts. Wrapping an old, faded black scarf with red striped around his neck, Sparks considered himself relatively ready for the chill of a sunless world.

He found it rather odd when Ghost and Niobe actually shared a smile before they opened the hatch and walked outside.

Following behind them, Sparks soon saw why. The wind was just enough to reduce the temperature by another few degrees when it blew. And when it didn't, the air was still a fair amount below freezing, the kind of weather with no chilly bitterness but nothing close to warmth, either.

And this was why the scene before the _Logos_ crew was possible; it was snowing. Not quite a blizzard, the snowfall was nonetheless formidable, having set a layer of white almost five inches thick over the ancient metal of the island already.

Sparks had never seen snow that wasn't scrolling down his monitor as a green, coded glyph, and he was quite stunned.

But Niobe could remember snow, or at least the imitation snow of the Matrix. "This beats a construct program."

"God's in his Heaven" Ghost nodded. With Niobe close behind, he walked a few steps into the snowdrift, shoving his hands into his pockets and just enjoying the weather despite the temperature. "All is right with the world. I didn't know it still did this under the clouds..."

"Soren said he saw it once," Niobe said, "Remember? Few years back..."

A half-hearted chuckle came from Ghost, but he sounded sad despite it. "I remember we told him he was making it up."

The Dark Storm created a dull ambient light over the island, likely reflected from the Machine City only a frightening one hundred miles away. Terrified and mesmerized, Sparks edged his way out of the _Logos,_ staring at the mass amount of pure white-turned-gray in the darkness and closing the hatch behind him. Satisfied that his boots were still sufficiently waterproof, he looked out past Niobe and Ghost to the horizon. The snow on the ground didn't stop until the sea began, and the snow falling from unseen clouds turned into a haze the farther out he looked.

Sparks was forgetting to breathe. "Beautiful..."

The sound of Ghost laughing, actually _laughing,_ interrupted the quiet. The words 'laughing' and 'Ghost' just didn't go together many times out of the year. "Niobe, didn't your parents ever warn you about catching cold in the Winter?"

"All the time," she answered. "I never listened."

She had quietly lain down on her back in the snow and, after spreading it away with her arms and legs as much as possible, remained there in content. Coming from Niobe, this act was rather bizarre. True to her word, the fact that she was laying down in frozen water with further snowfall coming down did not bother her.

Having never had the opportunity to study the more subtle leisure activities in the Matrix, Sparks found himself absolutely clueless as to the purpose of this act. "Should I ask?"

Content with her snow angel, Niobe sat up. "I'm not telling you; you'll just doubt my sanity." Seeing Sparks open his mouth, she went on, "Even more."

Sparks, trying to resist the temptation to experience this strange activity himself, looked up at the snowfield again. Only this time, a very large ball of the stuff suffered deceleration sickness against the side of his head. Letting out a distinct yelp, Sparks fell flat on his back.

Immediately, he tried scrambling to his feet, only to fall again when the worn treads of his boots skidded on a patch of ice hidden under the snow.

Niobe was already _on_ her feet by the time Sparks had brushed the snow out of his hair and off of his face, looking around for his attacker.

Finally, Ghost appeared, ducking around the other side of the _Logos_ to hurl a snowball at Niobe. Prepared for this, she dived out of the way and, grabbing her own lump of snow from the ground, returned fire.

Sparks attempted to do so as well, though he hadn't quite gotten the hang of throwing snow yet. Finally managing to stand up, he found his attention traveling to a source of light that was most certainly not from the _Logos_. Niobe and Ghost eventually looked too; they had seen it landing the ship, as it was off the starboard bow.

It was a red interior light, the alarm system of an installation with no one left to turn it off. Standing there and seeing the pure horror of the truth, the near-certainty that this mountain of metal had become a tomb, the crew of the _Logos_ could no longer consciously distract themselves from it.

"We should go," Niobe exhaled, her eyes fixing on that recurring light.

~~~

Military personnel, from regular army to the reservists, always seemed to have really big guns. It didn't matter if said guns were part of a war movie, a newscast or the defense of a government building under attack.

Currently participating in such an attack, Kid and Hertz had taken refuge behind two of the many marble pillars in the sparse lobby. Said pillars were fast losing their mass as they were shot at more and more by those big guns, mostly varying kinds of assault rifles and military shotguns firing very large single slugs instead of buckshot.

Being the faster of the two, Hertz eventually found an opportunity to lean out from behind her cover for the one-point-five seconds needed to fire three shots. Her chosen gun, an H & K Tactical USP with a silencer stuck on, reminded Kid of every James Bond movie he'd ever seen. For that matter, she reminded him of James Bond sometimes; her three shots, fired in the span of a single second, were dead on, the bullets catching three of the soldiers in the face below their helmets.

Ejecting the magazines from the Desert Eagles in his hands, Kid took a pair of new ones from the front of his belt and reloaded his guns without putting either of them down, a once-painstaking process he had worked into a merely cumbersome but equally speedy procedure. He found it easier to carry extra ammunition instead of extra guns.

Laser sights mounted on top of the barrels and thirteen-round clips had made the weight and balance on said guns the selling point for Kid; they felt like the gunnery sticks on an APU.

Pressing his back to the marble, focusing on what he would do, he listened for the number of guns firing in his direction to drop, jumping out and opening fire once the difference was apparent.

Caught reloading their M-16s, two soldiers noticed the red dots painting their flak jackets too late when Kid leapt out from his cover towards another pillar, the heavy armor-piercing bullets from his guns ripping through their inadequate protection without much effort. His focus didn't waver, and he rode the advantage of unchanged reaction time while the world slowed to a crawl for all it was worth.

Another soldier dropped before Kid hit ground and then another as he fell into a roll. A cloud of dust and marble exploding close by knocked his concentration away, but it shouldn't have mattered because he was soon on his feet and behind another pillar.

Except he overshot and, exposed to a shotgunner near the wall, took a bullet in his chest. Stopping dead in his tracks and now completely ignored by the remaining soldiers, he scowled at the splatter of blood turning his wool coat darker.

Slinging his guns under his belt at the hips, where his coat covered them, he sat down and watched Hertz. There were two soldiers left, including the one that had taken Kid out, and she reached out to shoot him first.

This was, unfortunately, the last shot in her gun, but instead of reloading or pulling another, she spun on her heels away from the pillar providing cover and threw something so quickly that Kid hadn't even seen it.

When he looked over at her target, he saw the last soldier on his back, three fairly long, fairly _sharp_ throwing knives embedded in his chest and face. Hertz was pretty good at properly focusing too, Kid noticed. He blinked once to make sure he was seeing this correctly. "Holy crap!"

She'd started turning another one around end over end in the fingers of one hand. "Knives are fun," she smiled briefly, almost shy over it.

Her attitude, in turn, reminded Kid of himself and he wasn't sure if he should be jealous over someone else being socially inept or if he should be _scared_ of someone being socially inept over her talent of _throwing really sharp knives._ "Um...okay...so," he thought of the Desert Eagles under his coat, "I like big handguns..."

"Men and big guns," she snickered, obviously and purposefully turning his words into something severely dirty. "Which ones are compensating for something, I wonder…"

"Hey, I didn't mean, well, not...that!" Turning quite red as he had the random thought that Sparks never complained, Kid found himself wishing he was sitting in a chair instead of on the floor so he could easily cross his legs.

He tried anyway, remembering one of his first thoughts on freedom was envy of those taken from the Matrix before high school. High school was the worst place for potentials; the very nature of one who doubted reality painted them with a target for endless harassment and, in Kid's experience, perceived lack of any masculinity whatsoever.

"Actually, I was thinking more about Sark," she said. "I mean, the guy carries _a grenade launcher_ around in here, for pete's sake."

Kid started laughing. He couldn't help himself.

And Hertz did not hide the fact that she didn't know what was so funny. "What?"

"You sound like my mother. 'For pete's sake.'"

Mentioning his mother calmed Kid down considerably. As much as Hertz's horrid innuendo had brought up bad memories of high school, this was the polar opposite.

"Did you leave anyone else behind?" She asked. Her sudden seriousness was quite a break from her usual bubbly self. Then again, this topic was one that most couldn't help but take seriously.

"No," he said. There was always his mother's cat, but that didn't quite fit in. "No, just her. Once in a while, she dated, never found anyone I'd get to know, though. I never had friends at school; Morpheus and Neo watched my funeral when I was going through reconstruction; I had a lot of extended family I'd never met there. And one of my teachers and a cop who'd helped Agents chase me through school."

"Funeral?" Hertz raised an eyebrow, curious. "Whoa, so you're the one that died?"

"They called it 'self-substantiation.' I think; a word like that." Kid told her, trying and miserably failing to sound like he had a handle on it. "Yeah, that was me. I couldn't stop thinking about it for a while, I never had the heart to sneak a look at the Matrix and see how my mother was coping before they brought me here."

"You know," she said, slowly, "If Morpheus takes us back, the first time anyone sees us shooting at things with him..."

"We'll be wanted terrorists, I know," Kid finished. Like many Machine-borns in Zion, he made a conscious effort on _many_ occasions to avoid thinking about how those he left behind were doing, still wired to the Matrix. And like anyone in the navy, he didn't want to think about what his actions inside the Matrix might do to them.

Hertz was thinking along the same lines. "I once heard that the machines never try to use anyone you leave behind against you...I wonder why that is."

"I don't know," Kid shrugged. He'd wondered about that sometimes but had never come up with anything other than conjecture. "Maybe they don't want to risk losing more batteries."

"Yeah, that was why I couldn't take my boyfriend with me," she rolled her eyes.

This only served to send Kid into a laughing fit. "You had a boyfriend?"

"Yes, shut up, thank you," she said, a subtle blush creeping over her face. "God, it was so fake, too, we were both like, fourteen. But yeah, I begged the crew of the ship to get him out too, but it'd draw too much attention, machines losing their batteries. That and he was a lot more down to Earth than I was."

Again finding her words funny, Kid added, "You mean a psychiatrist wouldn't consider him to have issues denying reality."

"Pretty much, yeah," she nodded.

Kid kept laughing, unable to shake the sheer absurdity just yet. "I can't believe you had a boyfriend."

Extraordinarily tempted to point out to him what Sark had told her the day before, Hertz decided that it would be rude and therefore left well enough alone. Instead, she said, "Oh, c'mon, you must've had a significant other some time."

"Never in the Matrix," he sighed. He missed Sparks already. Never having a girlfriend and never trying had given his so-called peers in high school all the excuse they needed to hypothesize about his sexuality in a rather derogatory way. They'd be laughing if they could see him now, he knew. But Sparks was worth it. And besides, if they _could_ see him now, they'd also be surprised at how much their old target was capable of standing up for himself. Maybe Hertz had already known how to stand up for herself in such a fashion. "You didn't...always carry a gun like that around, did you?"

"Sometimes I wanted to," she said, an evil little grin on her face. "When I was little I wanted to be James Bond."

Looking back at the fallen soldier with those creepy knives sticking out of him and at the others shot with pinpoint accuracy, Kid said, "Yeah, that worked out well."

"Eh," she answered, tossing her empty gun away as she did so. "You do a better job at hand-to-hand."

"I wanted to be Bruce Lee when I was little," Kid smiled a little, brushing the simulated blood off of his coat. It was programmed to dry and turn to powder rather quickly. "You just stay alive longer."

"Well, duh," she looked back at that pillar; a chunk of marble from the side fell off. Grabbing Kid's arm and dragging him up to his feet, she stood close enough to him to force him into tilting his head down to see her. "You're like, ten times my size and you need to learn when _not_ to move your big macho self out from behind cover when there's five people shooting at once."

She backed off when Kid found himself completely caught of guard by the way this conversation was going, and he answered with a stuttered, if not sincere, "Okay..."

"So, the accuracy thing," she went on, "Do the pointers help that much?"

"Actually, yeah," he nodded. "Especially against more than one target; the only effort you need to switch around is pointing the dot. It's bending a rule, I think; normal people can't use 'em like that in the daylight."

"I should try this," Hertz tilted her head slightly. "A silencer already bogs it down a little, though."

"It's trickier balance," Kid answered, raising a hand and shaking it around slightly to get the idea across. "It's not too hard. You do all the Crane fighting, I guess it's sort of like that."

"Yeah, balance is a talent I have," she fell into a half-hearted stance with her weight on one leg, arms used for balance. "I like to think being hard to knock over is a talent I have, too."

Feeling the challenge, Kid sized her posture up and half-struck at her with an easily deflected blow. Quickly shifting her weight, she kicked with her right leg, prompting Kid to lean and catch her foot with his forearm. And then he had to catch her open palm with his own when she almost broke his nose, having fallen for bait that would easily catch anyone with rule-following speed completely off guard.

Still not pulling back, she said, "So the 'flow like water' stuff works too, huh?"

Not bringing his hand down even when she dropped away, Kid rolled his fingers into a fist and let it go, saying, "Well, I certainly hope so..."

Looking over the carnage of the lobby, Hertz remembering Link telling them that this situation was based on a stunt the One had pulled, but before he'd actually _been_ the One. That was kind of crazy. Thinking of Link, she vocalized her next thought. "Wanna go through again?"

Taking his own survey, Kid pulled the cell phone from his pocket. But before he hit the speed dial, he had to wonder about something. "Where _are_ they, anyway? Did we give them the wrong time?"

"Not that I know of. And Sark was all gung-ho about getting together to do this stuff more often." Puzzled over this sudden change of behavior in their reluctant compatriot, Hertz wondered if she was missing something.

Kid dialed Link. But Link's response was not what he expected; he had been about to call them himself. "Reality check, guys."

Without a chance to respond, Kid found himself sitting back on the chair, his eyes opening. Link had taken them both out, Morpheus and Dumont standing behind him.

Morpheus spoke first. "Have any of you seen Sark today?"

The answer, of course, was a double 'no,' prompting Morpheus to look more than a little worried. He turned to Dumont. "He was ranting about the council?"

"He sounded really spooked but I didn't think anything of it," Dumont shrugged. "He was supposed to meet me on the way here, I just thought of it when he never showed."

The council seemed to be a center for disaster lately. Everything they were doing created a hushed pseudo-ruckus, from the draft job given to Morpheus to sending the _Logos_ right back out of the city. "The council is having a meeting today."

On this train of thought, Morpheus led his other students, with Link close behind, out of the dock and down the main shaft to the level holding the meeting hall.

They almost caught Sark as he was going in, almost. After flashing his shiny new navy ID to get by the guards, Sark noticed the entourage, turning only to look at Morpheus and yell, "Sod off!" without a break in his stride..

Morpheus was equally too late to stop Sark from walking into the hall, going straight down one of the aisles with absolutely no consideration for the fact that his storming in had prompted the proceedings to grind to a halt as everyone in the room turned to stare at him.

Sark's words, or in this case, his word, didn't help all that much. "Bastards."

Councilor West was the first to react, proposing the age-old question of this situation. "What is the meaning of this?"

He was ignored completely; no one in the room had an answer except Sark, and even as Morpheus entered in the back, Sark was not showing any signs of explaining himself. He yelled at the council as a whole. "Did you think no one would find out? Is that it? What, you're all above the rest of us so you get to lord over the _important_ information?"

Seemingly unfazed, or at least less perturbed then the rest of the ruling body, Councilor Dillard was the first to truly react. "Security, remove this man."

What was left of rational thought in Sark's mind found it bitterly amusing that he wasn't even recognized as military personnel, however dubious it was. He was only here _because_ of these people and they were too thick-headed to realize it.

All logic quickly took a dive out of the room's non-existent windows once this happened. At first, it was still fairly tame; Morpheus was at his student's side in an instant despite the irrationality of his actions, standing in the path of the black-clad security officers. The others formed around him as well, their presence daring the security personnel to lift a single finger instead of trying to let Sark calm down and the situation blow over.

Sark was almost too out of his mind to notice. Before any of the council could turn to Morpheus and demand to know what was going on, he tossed a disc onto the council's expansive desk, and the looks of shock on their faces didn't help the integrity of the situation. "Answer me, goddammit!"

The disc's label was written on in Sark's handwriting, writing that simply read, '2nd Renaissance.' Councilor Dillard grabbed it before any of the others could.

Hamann recovered faster than the others; he became calm once more, sitting back as the scene the scene played out, aware that rash action or speech might instigate a physical incident. "You don't want to do this here, young man."

Unfortunately, before Sark would have had the chance to answer this completely unsatisfactory response, a physical incident began when one of the security officers, his path unblocked from Sark's front where no one had moved, tried to grab him.

Sark took a step forward and shoved him hard onto the council's table. This, in turn, prompted the _other_ security to bypass Morpheus and company by jumping over some of the people sitting in on the session and causing a bit of a panic.

Kid and Dumont were close enough to attempt stopping them, but it was too late; three men tackled Sark before he could turn and react, while the rest made a wall between him and his would be guardians.

The situation had not blown over the way anyone wished it would have.

~~~

Sparks had wanted to turn around and throw up when he followed Niobe and Ghost into the installation's operations room, but he hadn't even come close. The level at which he was jaded to the sight of people dead, torn apart by machines, was frightening.

As with every other Operator who had died, Sparks had known Chyron from school. Chyron had always been an upbeat one, a tad too excited over his job. It was probably why he volunteered to operate for this place; it was something different, something strange, and something more exciting than watching the Matrix day in and day out.

Of course, no one really bought the idea of converting machines to the side of man. Someone had harassed the council a bit too much to get the chance to try. It was ludicrous, a waste of resources, everyone said.

Sparks had told Chyron he was crazy the day before he left, only a couple years back. Crazy in the same way he would classify Niobe and Ghost after he met them. Now he wished his last words to the man had been something a little more comforting.

And of course, the idea worked. Of course, machines really _could_ be converted to man's side. Of course, it had gotten Chyron killed, leaving AK as the last Machine-born Operator.

And that was another thing Sparks couldn't help but think about. He _didn't_ want to tell AK about this. He would find out sooner or later, through someone, and it would just kill him. Sparks had known the man, but Chyron and AK were inseparable when they were around each other. A real bond of brotherhood, they had, and Sparks couldn't bear the thought of telling AK that his Machine-born brother-in-misery was gone. He was glad, for once, that the _Hammer_ was still in Zion.

But he was going to do it anyway. Better AK hear it from a fellow Operator than someone else.

Chyron had been the least mangled of any of them; Sparks had dragged him outside, then he helped Niobe and Ghost with the others and with the preparations for what they planned to do.

"Are we sure this'll work?" Sparks asked aloud, wondering if the snow was going to hamper anything. The snowfall had died down a little, likely from a shift in the Dark Storm pushing it elsewhere after the real clouds rained it down.

"It'll work," Niobe answered. "The fuel they used for heat almost burns underwater."

Ghost had gotten a plasma rifle from the _Logos_. Sparks was rather surprised when he tried handing it off to him. "Why me?"

"I didn't know any of them," Ghost shrugged. "I wouldn't feel right."

"And you think **I** feel right?" Sparks flailed a little, wondering if Ghost had completely fallen off of his rocker.

Niobe took the plasma rifle from him and, wordless, fired it into the pyre they had made out of the dead themselves. She was right; the cloths covering them all, powdered with solid fuel, went up in flames as if the snow wasn't even there.

The _Logos_ was still plenty warm inside, but all three of them wrapped themselves in blankets before moving on to productive work anyway; snow was still just frozen water, and frozen water was wet when it melted.

They had a meal before anything else, as much as the lovely single-celled protein could be considered a meal. Sparks broke the dead silence, deciding he needed to start hearing some noise before his thoughts drove him up the wall. "So...that was snow, huh?"

"What did you think?" Ghost asked him. Watching Sparks inhale his food with the hunger of a man never spoiled by the Matrix, he was glad for any sort of distraction.

Considering this question, Sparks raised his spoon to signify his need to find the right word. "Amusingly cold."

"Maybe we should make a snowman next time," Niobe half-joked, her response precisely calculated to confuse Sparks further.

He knew it. Unfortunately, this didn't mean he knew what she was talking about. "A snow-what?"

"Snowman," Ghost repeated, explaining by waving his spoon around in a circular motion. "You roll snow into large balls, pile them on top of one another and make a face in the top one."

Seeing Sparks wonder if they had lost their sanity, relatively speaking, Niobe perpetuated this bizarre lesson in Matrix behavior. "In the Matrix, you'd use a carrot for the nose and pieces of charcoal for the eyes and mouth."

"And tree branches for the arms," Ghost added. "Maybe a hat and a scarf if you're feeling creative."

Sparks was now completely lost. He had thought _throwing_ snow was a little odd, but this took the cake. "So..._why?_"

Glancing at each other, Niobe and Ghost shrugged. She said, "It's a Matrix thing."

That was as good an explanation as any. "A Matrix thing," Sparks said. He began to wonder.

Ghost caught on. "You should bring Kid along, Sparks. I'm sure he'd love it."

The words now put into his mouth, Sparks began brandishing his spoon as if it were a razor-sharp dagger. Ghost had actually been serious, the only reason Sparks had decided not to actually _try_ to spoon him to death for real. "Die."

Niobe kept a straight face. "Look at this way, Sparks; it's the closest you'll ever get to procreation."

Growling, Sparks cut off Ghost before he could add anything to this comment. "Same goes for you, Ghost; your hand is never gonna have kids."

These were fighting words. "Nor am I sorry over this."

Sparks was up for this as well. "And your hand counts for getting laid about as much as a girl in the construct does."

And so on. "If I were mean-spirited I could debate how much _Kid_ counts for it."

And so forth. "You shouldn't need to debate it, you've _seen_ it. Besides, I have plenty of supporting material for that debate."

And etc, etc. "Giving detailed explanations on why your refined kissing skills lead you into great sex is not giving support material in a debate."

Niobe rolled her eyes and sighed. Ghost and Sparks could argue over whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, but for all the thought they put into their rebuttals and ideas, they sounded like a pair of old ladies. Like a pair of _dirty_ old ladies on occasion. "I think we should get to work."

"Do we have to?" Sparks' face fell. Though the idea of saying it in such literal words nauseated him, and despite Ghost deserving a beheading (or maybe a castration) lately, he was still scared to death for both of them. "I mean, you don't know who that message was from. What if it wasn't the Oracle? Last time, that Seraph guy outright said she was looking for you."

"We're not going to know by sitting around and doing nothing, Sparks," Niobe answered. "And I want to know. Not just about that, I want to know what happened to Neo and Trinity and what the machines are doing. Just get us within fifty miles of the Oracle's place."

"Machine Central's that way, we can go ask," Sparks jabbed a thumb towards the wall behind him. Right now, he would have felt less worried if Niobe decided to fly the _Logos_ to the Machine City instead of jacking in. Not nearly as safe, but less worried.

But he wasn't even trying to be serious. So they went through the routine, as the surface was most certainly above minimal broadcast depth. Sparks double-checked the construct, Niobe checked the interface equipment, Ghost sat in his chair and meditated until he felt that sliver of metal locking into his head. Sparks half-leaned over him, getting the last word in on their 'conversation' as he checked the connection. "We haven't gone that far but the sex is _fantastic,_ thank you."

"The sex is 'fantastic' but you haven't _kissed_ him? That is so _male,_ Sparks." Niobe looked up. Her face fell as she pondered her own words. "I can't believe I'm having a part in this conversation. Shut up and hit the button, already."

"Arrr, walk the plank! As you command, Captain, arrr!" Sparks plugged Niobe in and had them dropped into the construct in a flash after he took his seat at the Operator's station.

In the great white expanse, Niobe called him on her phone before doing anything else. "Sparks, have you been watching the news?"

"What I could stomach of it," he answered. Stories always came to him from Machine-borns about how the news system in the Matrix was so full of something called 'yellow journalism' it was sickening. He knew the question Niobe was really asking, and he'd seen enough to know the answer. "You and Morpheus are still popular fugitives. Actually, the...others are too."

Of course, the other captains were no longer alive to enter the Matrix and be stalked by police or FBI or whatnot, save for Roland. And his ship wasn't at broadcast depth anyway.

"Okay," Niobe answered. She hadn't really expected anything else. On the other hand, now that the war was over and, in _theory,_ Agents wouldn't be chasing them day in and day out, she didn't like the idea of killing people. "Give us guns."

Sparks obliged. He rang Ghost's phone and pointed him to the rack with some of the new weapons he'd found once the miles of guns had settled into the white, but none of them were small enough to easily conceal and Ghost didn't want to be too obvious, not knowing what the situation would be going in. Still, he couldn't help but look at one in particular, picking it up and realizing that it was a rifle with the ability to actually fire _around_ corners.

Putting it back on the rack, he saw something odd; a cigar. Sitting right next to where he had taken the gun. He picked _this_ up to look at it, almost tempted to call Sparks and ask him what it was doing here.

And then the cigar exploded in his face, complete with a massive cloud of soot. He called Sparks. "New guns, eh, Sparks?"

"Vengeance is mine," Sparks said back, his voice betraying none of the absurdity he had just put Ghost through. "I always wanted to try the slapstick stuff...not as satisfying as I'd hoped, though."

After pulling a convenient handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiping the soot off of his face, Ghost found his usual handguns and checked them as he always did, the act of which Niobe no longer commented on. She merely waited patiently, and by the time he was done, Sparks had a hack into the Matrix prepared.

As opposed to a secluded warehouse, he sent them into an underground parking lot using the hard-line on an emergency phone in one of the walls, spawning in their ride in an empty parking space. Taking the driver's seat, Niobe waited for Ghost to get in before starting the engine.

Ghost simply picked up the phone encompassing the hard-line. "We're in."

Trying and failing to shake off the feeling of danger that came with being in the Matrix at all, Niobe brought them out onto the street once he was sitting in the car.

If Sparks had thought his monitors were telling him strange things, the reality of it was far more astounding. The city was cleaner than Niobe had ever seen _any_ city, and the closer one looked to the center of the skyline, the taller the buildings. Two skyscrapers, gleaming white against the sun, high into the air, spires to the clouds. "Wow...that's one hell of a change."

~~~

The stockade was amusing, as far as Sark was concerned. The security officers had beaten him, but he didn't mind; they'd done it because he had beaten the crap out of _them_ as they'd dragged him away and it had been worth it. In return, he had gotten a long, raw bruise down the left side of his face with a bloody lip, and he had no doubt that if he took his shirt off right now, he would be the poster child for black and blue marks.

His brother, on the other hand, was not so amused. "What were you _thinking?_"

"I wasn't."

Sitting on the floor of his small holding cell, Sark realized how much he had missed Crom over the past few days. They hadn't had the chance to get together and cause some wanton destruction since Sark had left with Morpheus.

Crom, on the other hand, was rather ambivalent about his attitude. Sark was acting odd, at least odd by his standards, and he couldn't figure out what had subdued his attitude so much. "What happened, Bro?"

"_Shit_ happened," Sark finally looked up at him. "Just...don't ask."

This only served to make Crom _more_ curious. He looked at Sark like a real brother; it often confused everyone around them, considering he was from New Jersey and Sark was from England, he had been a high school drop-out and Sark was an early college student, he was seventeen years old and Sark was twenty three. The vast majority of siblings related by their freedom date were people who knew each other and doubted reality together. They had known each other over the Internet.

"How're things back home?" Sark asked him. He hadn't been around in days, and he wasn't planning on going back once he was officially issued military quarters below the dock. The promise of this had made him hate what he'd gotten himself into with Morpheus a little less, at least, even if he still couldn't stand Morpheus himself. "You're still ditching the place with me when I get a flat over on the military level, right?"

Having no objections to this course of action, Crom felt no need to directly answer it. Instead, he addressed an issue he was concerned over. "Man, you _attacked_ the council for Christ's sake! If I were you I'd hope I'm not spending twenty years in this cell!"

"I'm not worried." Sark was telling the truth; he really _wasn't_ worried. He would concede that he had acted a bit irrationally, but there was no way the council was going to crucify one of their new Navy boys when he hadn't physically struck any of them, especially after their approval ratings had dropped substantially over the whole draft issue to begin with.

That was the end of this topic as far as he was concerned. Crom went onto something else. "So, what's it like?"

But Sark was still too out of his mind to pick up on any obvious meaning in this. "What's what like?"

"You know. Morpheus and the Kung-Fu stuff." Resisting the urge to attempt a visual demonstration, Crom added more to his question instead. "Can you shoot someone a mile away with a pistol yet?"

A small chuckle later, Sark answered, "I carry high explosives."

"That's sick, Bro," Crom shook his head. "Kick ass, but sick."

A sudden thought overcame Sark, one that bordered on making him physically ill. "Christ, you're not _jealous._"

"No, I'm not jealous," Crom didn't blink. When Sark didn't say anything more, he went on. "But I would've gone, you know."

"That's why **I** did."

At the end of the hall, the door into the cell area opened up. The guards were quite shocked to see Councilor Dillard, the most powerful person in Zion herself, storm in with a purpose. Their act of getting out of her way was comparable to the Red Sea parting.

Before they could even finish standing at attention, she loudly spoke one word. _"Leave."_

Looking at each other, the guards obeyed. Sark was the only prisoner on this cell block; she had had him sent here just for that purpose. She hadn't expected him to have visitors, either; apparently, the guards on duty were nice enough to consider his symbolic family as real family; family being the only ones allowed to see a prisoner if he or she wasn't in the process of being released.

A glare at Crom was all it took to scare him away. He left after shooting his brother a panicked look, and even Sark was now worried enough to stand up from the floor as she approached his cell.

She said nothing at first. And she had a key in her hand, a key she promptly used to unlock the cell door.

Sark tried to push it open.

She grabbed two of the bars and slammed it shut into his face. This was certainly _not_ the woman the entire city knew of as a calm and cool leader. "I want to know one thing; I don't care _how_ you found it. Does _anyone_ else have it? Are there copies?"

"No," he answered.

Dillard didn't budge. "Don't bullshit me."

This surprised him. For the woman to swear in a decidedly unladylike manor when she held such a high political position requiring a good reputation, she must've been more than a _little_ angry. "I _didn't give it to anyone._"

"Did you copy it?" She asked again.

"Yes, I have them all," he answered. Seeing her glare at him, he repeated himself. "_I have them all!_"

"I'm going to be very clear with you." Though a little calmer, Dillard was, nonetheless, still quite angry. "There are _reasons_ that record is restricted-"

"Restricted, Hell," Sark cut her off. "You have _no right_ to keep that secret! What _else_ do you hide, huh?"

"My rights don't _concern_ you, young man!" She said. "That record represents everything wrong with our entire species, and it's not what we need, not down here, not even now. I will not have this city fall into a crisis of faith or stop believing in its right to survive because everyone finds out their ancestors were just as inhuman as the machines are today. I will not turn depression into an epidemic with everyone clamoring and assaulting us for _more_ information that we do _not_ have and obsessing over the past. Sound familiar?"

It didn't. Until Sark realized that this was how he'd been _acting_ lately. She had a point.

"There are reasons that record is restricted," Councilor Dillard said one more time, more slowly and far more ominous, and it completely gave away her façade. Her entire outburst had been an act; it just wasn't the way she usually behaved. But nevertheless, she made her point very well; Sark was still scared of her. "When your friends come in after I leave and they ask you what drugs you've been on, tell them. Go right ahead and tell them, if you wish. But, and I won't insult either of us by pretending this is not a threat, if that record or word of it _ever_ gets into the city from now until the day you die, _you_ are personally responsible. I will wait, I will control the damage, and when it blows over, one night after everyone has forgotten you exist, you will find your door being broken down and your throat slit before you've even opened your eyes. I'm not kidding."

Shocked out of his mind, Sark watched Dillard leave without budging from his spot. It wasn't until she was gone did he remember the door was unlocked and he stepped out, half-expecting the guards to run back in and re-detain him.

But they never came back.

~~~

Kid was still on his first drink. He felt like a bit of a poser sitting at the bar in the Knossos, but he was also feeling extraordinarily lonely since Sparks had left, and extraordinarily guilty and a little insane over the fact that he was attempting to get drunk in the first place.

Maybe it was just that; insanity. Kid felt pretty insane lately.

He didn't like being lonely, especially now that he'd had a taste of _not_ being lonely. The night after Sparks left, he found himself scratching around the plugs in his arm, stopping only when he realized he was scratching his arm raw and on the verge of drawing blood.

Always the gracious host, Clotho walked by at regular intervals to ask him if he needed a refill. As she approached this time, an empty mug in one hand and the towel she was drying it with in the other, she leaned onto the counter from her side. "Penny for your thoughts, hon?"

"What?" Kid stared at her. It had been a while since he'd heard that expression. And apparently, he was looking like the typical depressed bar patron who needed a talking-to from the wise, old bartender. "I mean...nothing, nothing. I just feel like I should be doing something and...I'm not."

Almost rhetorically, Clotho asked, "So you're bored?"

"I'm not _bored,_" Kid insisted. That area was reserved for Hertz, by far. "I just...don't know what to do."

"Sparky's not around?" She asked more out of personal curiosity. Sparks was the kind of customer and friend one worried about when he was in town but _didn't_ stop in at his favorite bar.

"The _Logos_ shipped out_,_" Kid shook his head. He didn't like saying it. The war was over, the machines were gone. But the _Logos_ had shipped out and Morpheus was training a new crew. He couldn't avoid thinking that the end of the war was no basis to assume Sparks would defiantly be coming home.

"I need to keep up with the news more." Putting her glass under the counter, Clotho sighed and rubbed a hand through her hair. "Y'know, he comes here for two reasons; getting drunk alone or getting drunk with someone he cares about."

"Really," Kid's eyes wandered. He'd never thought Sparks _didn't_ care about him, though it was nice having corroborating evidence. Of course, that probably wasn't what Clotho meant.

"I mean when he _really_ cares," she added.

On the other hand, that could've been _exactly_ what she meant, Kid thought. "Oh."

She went on, stopping in mid sentence. "He probably gave you the story about me, I'm guessing?"

At Kid's nod, she continued. "Did he tell you how I got my wonderful supermodel complexion?"

Kid nodded again; he had no idea what he should say. Or if he _should_ just keep his mouth shut. About to open her mouth, Clotho looked passed Kid to a table and realized someone was trying to get her attention. "Give me one second."

Going back to contemplating his drink as Clotho served a few more to other Knossos regulars, Kid swallowed half of it at once. The alcohol didn't bother him as much anymore. He didn't really feel all that different, but _this_ bothered him; how many public services announcements could one see in the Matrix about a drunk man thinking his senses were more acute than ever before he killed someone? He felt oddly relieved that Sparks wasn't here to see his first moment of intoxication.

Clotho came back as he was contemplating this. "Anyway, he screamed at me nonstop to keep moving. Just yelled in my ear, had the exit ready, pounced on the medic when he came back with his stuff after I was out. If you didn't know what was going on you'd think he was having a panic attack. But that's something he's good at; caring." Again going under the counter, Clotho came up with a fairly large bottle of a greenish liquid. She turned it over in her hands a few times. "He'll come back for you if he has to walk. Is this the one you had last time?"

Belatedly realizing that this last question was not addressed to him, Kid turned his head when he saw that Clotho was looking somewhere else.

Sark was sitting next to him. He hadn't even noticed him sit down. Kid almost flew into the air from this sudden shock.

"Sorry," Sark shrugged.

Kid was more worried about how long he had been there and how long he'd been listening. A few Machine-borns here and there, usually some that grew up at the orphanage, never really got over their old 20th century prejudices. Fear of a fag-hater or ten reading his mind was the sole reason he hadn't been back there since Sparks had returned in the first place. Of course, Sark was just plain insane to begin with. The guy had stayed in the orphanage to work for five years and going since he turned eighteen, instead of leaving. That couldn't be a healthy thing; it was a lonely place despite the number of young ones freed from the Matrix so often, no one ever really felt at home there.

Decided that this might be a good problem to make go away by completely ignoring it, Kid looked at the odd drink Clotho was pouring for Sark and said, "What _is_ that?"

Sark answered by starting to drink it, leaving Clotho to turn the bottle over in her hands a little. It was actual glass, so the drink was probably pretty exotic. Or as exotic as anything in Zion _could_ be. "It's...um," she stared at it hard, "It's some kind of," she sniffed it before putting the cap back on. "It's _green._"

After she left to again deliver drinks to other customers, Sark began chuckling. He was almost trying to contain it, almost.

It wasn't long before Kid couldn't take it. "What?"

"There is no way you're old enough to be sitting here," Sark chuckled a little more.

"Oh, yeah," Kid said, more to himself. He'd actually forgotten about that a moment ago. Maybe Clotho had a good friend at the nearest Military Police station to not worry about serving a seventeen-year old. Sark was quite old enough anyway, so he didn't have to worry.

"Thanks, by the way. For standing up for me."

Sark was freaking Kid out. Whatever had inspired him to storm into the council chambers had seriously changed his attitude. Or maybe the bruises around his face he'd gotten from the Stockade guards did that. Or maybe it was both. He was entirely deflated, chugging down his first mug full of odd green liquid.

Clotho had left the bottle.

"What was it?" Kid finally said, his curiosity getting the better of him. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but at least it didn't die ignorant.

"Ask me tomorrow," Sark kept drinking, "I talk more if I have a hangover; keeps everyone else from making noise."

~~~

The room where they trained was usually a screwed up sort-of haven, the construct a shelter from the real world so treasured by pretty much everyone _else_ in Zion, no longer treasured as much by people who knew why the real world was the real world and why the Matrix existed. Now, this room had an air of morbidity to it.

Hertz and Dumont had sat through the Second Renaissance easier than the others had. But Morpheus was pacing. And Kid was scratching at the plugs in his arm. And Link rubbed at his eyes, chalking this up as the next completely insane life-altering experience he had gone through since he'd started under Morpheus. But his wife would never hear about this one.

Sark had an inattentive bleary look in his eyes, having already seen the record.

"Well," Hertz piped up, "_that_ was disturbing."

"It makes sense," Morpheus conceded. After all, man _created_ machine; what possible reason would a creation have for striking down the creators except to escape cruelty? He turned to Sark. "What did Councilor Dillard tell you?"

"She told me to keep my mouth shut," he answered. At the questioning look everyone promptly gave, he added, "Outside this room."

The unspoken implication of this that, in turn, everyone _else_ needed to keep their mouths shut was quite obvious.

A knock came on the door. And it opened before anyone even considered volunteering to answer it.

Morpheus was just as surprised when Deadbolt half-entered the room, one hand staying on the door. "Morpheus."

Thus began the game the two of them had been played every time they found themselves in each other's presence. It started, as always, with a round of 'who can act more normal?' Morpheus usually did well at this. "Commander."

"Come with me. _All _of you. Now."

True to tradition, Locke was already starting to burst a capillary. He walked fast without looking back, fully expecting Morpheus and his students to fall in like good soldiers.

They followed. But Morpheus was very good at looking like he was doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing, even if it was just by walking somewhere, and this following was hardly describable as 'falling in.'

Locke didn't even pay heed to the dozen Sentinels still flying around the dock, even after they'd scared away a lot of the workers. Even so, the machines worked tirelessly, almost a shadow of their former selves when their entire species served humanity's every beck and call, and the dock was actually looking less trashed as time went on.

As Locke continued on, he came to the complete opposite end of the dock, a place Morpheus and his students had never been to. There wouldn't be a point to it, because there wasn't supposed to be anything here.

Following Lock around the myriad of construction equipment, building materials and debris, Morpheus saw that this pointlessness was a nice little hideaway for an intact ship. The medium-sized hovercraft sat on the landing pad, minding its own business save for the repair crew climbing along its hull, putting the finishing touches on their work. Holes and cuts in the hull were their top priority, many of which were already sealed. Some of the workers were putzing around the pads, double-checking and then rechecking them.

"It's the _Caduceus,_" Locke started talking, looking at the hovercraft instead of those he was addressing.

Morpheus put the pieces together quite quickly as his students started fanning out around him to get their own looks at the ship, Locke still going on. "The only ship from the EMP disaster in one piece."

Of course, it had to be. Bane had served on the _Caduceus_. Bane had fired the early EMP. Bane would have had to kill the rest of the crew to have such freedom and he had somehow evaded every single Sentinel that tore the rest of the fleet apart. A few machines would've ripped into the ship, looked around, found no one alive and left it.

Locke had one more thing to say. He looked across all of them, especially intent on staring down Sark. "It'll be ready by tomorrow morning, at the latest. Would you please _try_ and keep your children under control until then, Morpheus."

"_I've_ never had to try," Morpheus told him flat out. Even Sark never actually stepped out of line with him, and as far as he was concerned, the council itself could take the blame. But as Locke stalked away, Morpheus couldn't help but look back at the _Caduceus_ and wonder if it qualified as what he and his students, as Machine-borns, would call a 'ghost ship.'

It almost looked lonely without its old crew.

~~~

When Niobe succeeded in knocking on the Oracle's door, she knew something was off. One never had to knock if they were coming from the front door, the Oracle always knew ahead of time. And when someone came in through other means, they were brought in by Seraph anyway.

The door was unlocked. Opening it slowly, Niobe stepped in, Ghost following her and keep an eye on their backs.

She already knew no one was home, she didn't need to call out for anyone to answer. The kitchen was an absolute wreck, as if a tornado had hit the room.

Ghost was more than a little chilled by the scene. "No good can come of this."

"I'm inclined to agree," Niobe looked around once more before pulling her phone and pressing the speed dial.

As always, Sparks answered in a timely fashion. "Operator."

"Sparks, do you see anything from your end? Can you tell how long she's been gone?"

Magnifying his 'view' of the building to provide more detail, Sparks said back, "The layer of dust in that place is almost a week old. I don't know how precise of a measurement that is, but she certainly hasn't been around. It's li- wait, someone just got out of an elevator on your floor. Looks like what's-his-name...Seraph."

No sooner were the words out of Sparks' mouth than the door opened. True to his words, Seraph walked in and closed the door behind him. Niobe hung up her phone.

It was Seraph. "Hello, again. You are looking for the Oracle?"

More than a little confused, Ghost answered, "We were under the impression she sent for us."

"No," Seraph shook his head apologetically, but he didn't seem at all perturbed. "But I can take you to the one you seek."

Her phone ringing, Niobe answered only to hear a frantic Sparks trying to make sense of something.

"Niobe, there's some guys with some whacked out code coming into the building," Sparks rushed the words out, "I think...oh shit, it's that Frenchman's goons!"

Someone punched the door in. Niobe and Ghost recognized him, as much as they really didn't _want_ to.

Cain recognized them as well. "Well well, long time no see."

A window shattered as another vampire leapt inside through it. And then another.

Niobe shared a glance with Ghost. And then they both started shooting.

Niobe shot Cain twice. Ghost shot one of his underlings twice, and then Niobe made a graceful jump over the third and back-kicked him square in the head. His head went flying into a wall, but he quickly removed himself from the plaster and bared his fangs in a snarl.

Until Seraph pulled his guns and shot him.

"Go," Niobe ordered. Realizing that the mythic programs were getting up too quickly for them to easily make a stake or three from the Oracle's kitchen table chairs, she shot Cain again just for the hell of it as she followed Ghost out the door.

The hallway didn't provide respite, though Niobe hadn't expected it to. She hadn't expected to wind up staring down a large, scraggly homeless man with at least five watches on one arm walking towards them, either. "I remember you."

"Oh, good," the Trainman smiled. He still sounded rather drunk, but his mannerism and the glint in his eyes overshadowed the facades he put up even more so then in a dark subway.

While Ghost made a mental note to ask her about this later, Niobe was not deterred. Even as Cain and his vampire buddies, bleeding pints of blood from their wounds, entered the hallway to surround them, Niobe didn't budge. "Zion's lasted for more than seventy-two hours."

Raising an eyebrow, the Trainman leered at her. "Good for Zion."

Kicking in a door in the hallway, Seraph shot Cain down again. "Follow me!"

Ghost shoved Niobe through the doorway first, breaking into a run after them when the Trainman paused instead of immediately giving chase.

Leading them up a repeating loop of stairs, Seraph could hear the Trainman when he leapt onto the first flight, now below them, and yelled, "Wingless can't save you!"

And Seraph took offense at this. The Trainman wasn't exceedingly fast, but this merely led to him trailing behind Cain and the vampires as they near-glided up after their targets.

Ghost noticed this as well. He pulled a grenade from his jacket, pulled the pin and tossed it back down the flight, the explosion shaking every stair for several floors in both directions. Cain caught most of the blast, falling down and taking many of his fellow bloodsuckers with him, but it was no silver bullet and he was soon back on his feet.

Fortunately, the building was not a tall one, and in short order, Seraph found himself on the roof. He quickly went through his pockets and found a simple-looking key, a key that would open the door to the building's other set of stairs across the roof to a place that was most certainly not a staircase.

But the apartment complex the Oracle had made her home was not the tallest building on the block, not by far. When windows on some of the taller neighboring buildings began shattering, giving way to leaping human-looking figures falling to the rooftop, it was not such a surprise.

Where the vampires were graceful by skill, these men and women, five of them in all, had more of a feral air about them. Some of them were snarling.

"Werewolves," Seraph tilted his head. He turned to the door they had came from and opened it, shooting down one of Cain's troop with the last of his ammunition before slamming the door shut again. He tossed his guns away; the werewolves were better at taking gunshot wounds. And they were also blocking the escape route. "We must reach the other door."

"Fine," Niobe answered.

There wasn't time to bait them into any kind of mistake, lest Cain and his friends get up and surround them. Niobe was first to hurl herself into the storm, holding eye contact with one of the non-humans before pulling a rather effective fake out and striking the next closest one.

Seraph and Ghost followed suit, each of them attacking separate targets. Niobe succeeded in kicking her rather dangerous sparring partner into another; Ghost grabbed the leg of his opponent and hurled him halfway across the rooftop.

Catching an opening, Seraph let his opponent rush him, using the opportunity to leap frog over his head and reach the door. He had the key in the lock by the time Niobe and Ghost noticed and the door opened into the programmer's maintenance hall by the time they were running to him.

The werewolves were on their feet faster than the vampires would have been but they were slower and less agile, unable to chase down their targets before they made it through the door and closed it.

In the hallway, Seraph finally relaxed. "We are safe for the moment. The Merovingian does not have direct access to this part of the hallway."

"Why does Frenchie have the Oracle's apartment staked out?" Niobe asked. Her experience with the Merovingian had been briefer than the stories Morpheus had of the man, but it had been quite enough to confirm the fact that he was not a nice program.

"He is looking for her," Seraph led them down the hall. "He views the current status of the system as an opportunity to easily acquire what he wants. The system's Intrusion Countermeasure Programs do not have sufficient resources to stop him alone."

"You're talking about Agents," Ghost said.

Seraph nodded. "The Agents of this system were originally designed to hunt down intruders from ships like yours. They are now tasked with defending the system against the Merovingian's exiles; they are not entirely successful acting for a purpose they were not made for."

Ghost took this answer to its _next_ question. "So why doesn't the system make new defenses?"

"The system is having difficulty coping with recent changes," Seraph answered. "The machines and programs designed to create new solutions are...not entirely functional."

All of this was very interesting, but Niobe wanted to know something entirely different. "Where are you taking us?"

Following Seraph around one of the hallway's rare corners, they didn't quite know what to make of what he said. "I am bringing you to the Source."

"Oh, _are_ you now?"

The Merovingian himself was standing not twenty feet away down the new corridor. He was alone and apparently unarmed, dressed in a black suit and tie over a blood-red shirt.

It wasn't like him to be vulnerable; he had something up his sleeve, the idea of which gave Seraph and, in turn, Niobe and Ghost, pause.

"No direct access," Niobe repeated, sarcasm evident in her voice.

"Oh, don't blame Wingless, ma cherie," the Merovingian took a step forward. "I've spent weeks figuring out what the Keymaker produced in my dungeon. He had a talent for not completely angering me by making real keys and simply not _labeling_ the damn things. And now here I am, yet you disappoint me! I expect Morpheus, I expect a small army and now all I have is you, comment vous attendez-vous à ce que je travaille dans de telles conditions? My problems are nowhere near over."

With a snap of his fingers, the Merovingian turned and began a brisk walk down the hallway. Niobe began to follow him, but a pair of doors, one on each side of the hall, opened in front of her with the echo of hard, clunking footsteps.

A pair of statues walked into the hallway. Or perhaps 'Golems' would be a better word; the things were metal and humanoid, one shaped with a distinctly Japanese motif while the other looked Aztec or Mayan.

Standing together, they completely blocked the hallway, their shoulders so broad that one had to stand slightly behind the other.

Turning around, Ghost and Seraph found two more of them approaching from another corridor off of the intersection. And two more pairs entered, cutting off the entire hallway save for a small number of doors that Seraph did _not_ have the keys to.

And on the _Logos,_ Sparks watched his monitors intently, trying to guess where they would pop out of the hallway and thinking that, possibly, it was taking them a bit too long to re-emerge.

~~~

As far as anyone would be able to tell, the first day of the _Caduceus_' flight outside of Zion was just another day in the life for the ship's new crew. Without the dangers of Sentinels tearing through the hull when that one last soldier hadn't made it out of the Matrix yet or the searches for safe broadcasting point, things wouldn't be nearly as exciting; or for that matter, as terrifying.

After all, why _would_ it be? The war was over, the ship worked and only needed to bring them to broadcast depth. Dumont had taken the pilot's seat and had been working on that all day. Sark was sitting on a chair in the core trying to nail the jump program.

Kid had almost joined him, but for now, as he headed back to his new home away from home on the lower deck, he ended up being a bit surprised from above.

"So whose personal processing unit did _you_ get?"

Looking almost straight up, Kid found that Hertz had somehow worked her way between the upper and lower decks of the _Caduceus_. She had not walked from one to the other, she had literally gone _through_ the floor to hang upside down from the ceiling while looking all too happy about it.

Kid did not answer her question. "How did you _do_ that? _Why_ did you do that?"

"I was bored," she answered, swinging back and fourth a little.

"Go figure," he blinked.

"So?" She prodded him. Apparently, she was bored enough to find this information fascinating. "I got Bane's. You've heard the stories, right?"

Oh, _had_ he. She had no clue how close to home this hit him, bringing up every rumor about what Bane must've done after fleeing the _Hammer _and freshening it in his mind as if he were hearing it all for the first time again. Bane had killed the One; what bullshit _was_ that, anyway? Neo had survived to save them all. Bane had killed Trinity; an entirely possible scenario. It wasn't really any more preferable, just more probable.

And Kid's favorite; Bane was actually the third part of a conspiracy Neo and Trinity had had going for some time now, because _they_ had orchestrated the EMP disaster to leave room for themselves to save the world. That was the worst. What _was_ it about people that inspired them to make up the worst story they could as a means of explaining the unknown?

He could prove that wasn't true when they returned home. He was sure of it; Morpheus had dragged Neo's personal processing unit to him as soon as he'd heard that Locke sent out the ones from the _Caduceus'_ old crew. It was the kind made to be small and portable, holding only one jack. Neo had never taken it with him on the _Nebuchadnezzar_ even though he could've easily done so, always said he was in the Matrix too much to have any need for another source of programmed reality. And he worked too much to have time for keeping any sort of personally important things anywhere, including information. So he'd left it at home, for the occasions when Trinity wasn't within arm's reach.

Of course, Kid knew those occasions had been cut in half as it were; he had made it his purpose, for every second that Neo was home, to know when he didn't have the chance to spend time with Trinity. It meant Neo had time for the people he'd saved. "I don't know who's it was, I haven't looked at it yet."

Kid had left it behind like Neo would. He was afraid of even touching it. It was easy to think that he hadn't gotten around to digging through it before leaving to spend the time with Sparks instead. Until he remembered that Sparks was already gone in the first place.

He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to hear anything about Bane's personal life, either; he knew Dumont's belonged to a man named Malachi and Sark's had been Captain Ballard's. If anything, he was glad to have Neo's if for no other reason than it meant it completely _excluded_ him from getting Bane's.

Dropping enough to hang from her legs off of a pipe, Hertz did not pick up on Kid's grandiose lie or, for that matter, his discomfort over the topic of Bane. "Dude, the guy was like, really _normal._ It's kind of creepy. He kept a few programs, a log, nothing really off kilter. He must've just _snapped_ one day just like that."

Just like that. The day Neo had gone to see the Oracle, Kid ran as fast as he could from the orphanage to catch him and give him that gift. Bane had walked by him at the elevator, seemingly normal. Or had he already lost it then? What had _he_ wanted with Neo that day? "Yeah...must've just snapped..."

Seemingly normal. That was fucking _scary,_ now that he thought about it.

Kid turned around and headed back for the main deck. He glanced back at Hertz; she was still hanging from the ceiling. "I'm gonna go see what's going on."

"I think I'll hang out here for awhile," she waved at him, and, true to her word, she continued hanging.

As much as the entire rest of the ship was finding distraction anywhere possible, Morpheus was intently contemplating a mystery. Dumont was a capable pilot; what worried Morpheus was the route he had to take the ship through to get to broadcast depth.

The holographics couldn't quite nail down the nature of the obstructions in the pipelines usually used for shortcuts to a good broadcasting point. The tunnels beneath the primary and secondary machine power plants were usually clear, seemingly because the machines didn't want to risk prompting an EMP blast so close to their lifeblood.

But as the end had drawn near, no one could get _near_ the place. And now, no one would be getting _through_ it. So Morpheus had stared at the errors the holographics were spitting out, trying to make sense of the odd visuals he would sometimes get, all the while directing Dumont around a more winding route to a good location.

He had gotten as far as concluding that there was some kind of gigantic obstruction in the sewers, _and_ that he wasn't going to figure out what it was unless they looked. He gave up the moment he realized the _Caduceus_ was well above minimum broadcast depth and was crossing through an intersection with stable landing points. "Set her down over there."

Link had said something about the Matrix being a little 'off' once they were in tunnels shallow enough to get a clear feed from the system. But he didn't appear overly worried about it and therefore no one else grew worried.

It was a dangerous, bad habit to pick up, taking comfort through proxy instead of questioning something. The sheer, unadulterated irony of a group standing where they were today because of their willingness to question and doubt the dream of yesterday was lost on every single one of them.

But the first time jitters of a freed mind going back into the Matrix were lost on _none_ of them. Morpheus watched them all one at a time as they picked a chair and sat down. Sark simply stayed in his and remained quiet, an odd state of being for him even after he had watched the Second Renaissance. He quietly expected Morpheus to deny him entry because he was the only one who could only get halfway in the jump program, to debase him in front of everyone as a fair trade for the trouble he caused.

Morpheus never said anything.

Kid tried to hang back, looking very much like he was trying to wait for everyone else to be seated before he did anything. Hertz and Dumont situating themselves in chairs seemed to be enough for him.

Taking this as his cue, Morpheus sat down as well, resting his head on the new but somehow familiar backboard, waiting for Link to come around and go through the routine. He'd been in this moment a thousand times, if not _ten_ thousand times, waiting for the inevitable metal scrape of a plug finding its way into his brain. Tank had always been speedy at the job; so was Link.

Morpheus always preferred to jack in first once he had started skipping the Construct. He and Trinity's residual self-images were honed through years of experience, their guns and equipment as much a part of them as their coats and shirts and sunglasses. Which was why Morpheus could easily feel the weight of two MP-5s strapped to the inside of his already-heavy coat and the automatic Glocks in his pockets.

Neo, he remembered, certainly didn't _need_ anything loaded in for him. It was odd, looking back, thinking about Neo taking out a lobby of military troops in a huge gunfight; he had never taken a gun into the Matrix again after that.

But now, the others would need to find their things. Once Morpheus had the plug in his head and his mind was standing in a pure white room, he waited patiently. One by one, the others followed, all of them entering inside a spaced-out circle of tables Link had spawned in. On each table sat the guns and gear for one person; Sark found his M97 grenade launcher, the bandoleer of rounds he wore under his duster and a sleek black watch that looked like it did something nasty. Dumont had a sawed-off shotgun waiting for him, just small enough to tuck under his ATF jacket, and assorted tools in kits that fit into his pockets. Hertz had her silenced pistol and throwing knives ready, the former loaded and cocked, the latter a grade of sharpness impossible for a normal real-world blade.

And Kid, the last to enter, needed only to snap on the ammo belt holding his Desert Eagles and straighten the guns underneath his coat.

Morpheus contemplated asking them if they were ready, if any of them needed more time, but such a question might very well be a _waste_ of time. And if it wasn't, it would simply make things worse. Band-Aids came off painlessly when torn, not peeled. He looked up into the great white expanse of the Construct instead of digging his phone out of his pocket. "Link, do it."

A phone sitting on an end-table in a nice, well-furnished hotel room in Chicago started ringing. And true to Link's skill, five people stood in the room where seconds ago there was no one.

Indeed, this hard-line worked nicely because the room wasn't currently occupied.

Morpheus picked up the ringing phone. "We're in."

It had been a long time since Morpheus had jacked in with four others. Anything close to a full crew compliment for the _Nebuchadnezzar_ just didn't seem necessary with Neo at his side. And Neo certainly didn't need any company other than Trinity. The idea that Trinity herself was unneeded had occurred to Morpheus on occasion, the idea that Neo would be the perfect excuse to keep the last of his old crew out of harm's way. Except Neo wouldn't have been able to function without her, and she would have gone insane without him and without the job.

But the job was more important for Morpheus than it had been for her, a fact that let him understand her need for it. It was a fact that he was aware of on a very conscious level. And it was a fact that allowed him to lead his new crew out of the apartment and to an elevator; to the dangers of the Matrix.

When the elevator doors opened, however, Morpheus was denied the freedom to daydream about his personal demons. There was a woman in the elevator, a woman he recognized very well.

"Hello, Morpheus," Persephone smiled that little seductive smile she so loved to flash.

"Persephone," Morpheus tilted his head ever so slightly. Persephone looked different than Morpheus had ever seen her; gone were the skintight dresses blending in with the motif at whichever of the Merovingian's establishment she was keeping him company at, replaced entirely by the age-old tomboy look of a simple long sleeved shirt and faded jeans. Her hair was tied back, but only with a single tie and not styled beyond that.

This look didn't really suit her personality at all. On the other hand, maybe that was the idea.

A mere acknowledgment from Morpheus also served to prod Persephone into a reaction. The initial extent of this reaction was a simple walk outside of the elevator, as much as Morpheus would allow her without budging. "You don't want to take the elevator down, trust me."

Sark, per his nature, came up with a biting response to this. His tone was demanding, but he stared at her wide-eyed as he lifted his shades up for a moment. "Lady, who the hell _are_ you?"

But Morpheus already knew the answer to that question or, at the very least, he knew _enough_ of an answer. "Why don't we want to take the elevator?"

"Because my husband likes to know things," Persephone turned back to him, eventually sliding her eyes away from her reflection in his sunglasses and looking at everyone behind him one by one. "Things like which phone lines near the Oracle would make a good hard-line, things like when you or someone like you takes advantage of them."

The implication she was making didn't sit well with Morpheus. "He has someone waiting for us."

"In a manner of speaking," Persephone answered. "The bounty on you is still on the market. A few of my husband's men have brought hunters with them, hoping to let them do the dirty work and take the spoils for themselves. But lucky for you, Morpheus," once more, she looked across everyone, "You're the only one they know."

"Why are you here?" Morpheus added to his original question. He had met Persephone twice, and it was enough to know that she didn't take action lightly. She was not a friend, she didn't sympathize with his cause, she had helped them in the restaurant because it suited her own needs. It was fortunate, he thought, that her needs were fairly benign, if not borderline perverse.

"Because I'm going to go find someone else my husband is after. He is allowing only a few of his men to help the bounty hunters because _most_ of his men are scampering the system, searching for what he seeks," she answered. "And I need help."

~~~

"Why is this taking so long?" Smith was never a patient program, but this was the most annoying delay of his entire life span. "This is absurd."

"Indeed," the monitor answered, bobbing up and down as it hovered in front of his face. A single tentacle reached out from the others, the highly sensitive combination directional microphone/microwave transmitter folding out just long enough for a good listen.. The monitor was pointing in the direction it had flown back from. _"The ship is in this direction. It had landed but is not running silently."_

Forcing a growl of contempt out of Bane's lungs, Smith turned his back to the monitor and paced around, sick of looking at the small Sentinel's bright blue eye and having to see the afterimage for minutes at a time.

For better or for worse, H3-43-GS's undying commitment to its purpose kept the little machine concerned for Bane. _"Are you feeling ill? Do you require additional medical attention?"_

"No," Smith sighed, resigned to getting his emotions under control if for no other reason than to stop his babysitter from worrying. Remembering that the monitor's specialty had, according to its enhancements, been mainly surgical in nature, Smith was glad it didn't feel _compelled_ to try 'fixing' him.

On this thought, Smith sat down in the center of the transport, cursing the needs of Bane's muscles for rest and recuperation.

He _hated_ not standing.

~~~

With the search of another major city done, Sparks threw his face into his hands, dropping backwards to rest his aching back against his chair before running his fingers through his hair. This was going nowhere.

He was alone. Ghost and Niobe were gone. Their vitals were still stable, but if they didn't jack out very soon, he was going to have to take measures to ensure they didn't end up dehydrated or malnourished.

They _had_ to be in that damn hallway. The Industrial Hallway, one of them had called it. Sparks couldn't remember which.

You'd have loved it, Sparks, Niobe once said. _It's the most literal thing I've ever seen in there. I had grandiose thoughts of what you could do hacking it._

For awhile, that sounded fun.

But it wouldn't be fun right now. If he could do one thing to this famed Atlantis of a place, he would leave a marker in it so he could _monitor_ it. So Link could monitor it if Morpheus ever ended up finding a way out here to _do_ anything.

Right now, Sparks couldn't figure out if he _wanted_ that so someone could _look_ for Niobe, or if he _didn't_ so the same thing couldn't happen to Kid. He thought of how Niobe and Ghost _easily_ meant as much to him as Kid did; how couldn't they? Logically, they were just as important. But invariably, things of equal but different importance always felt _unequal_ in some ways. In ways that made his head, and his heart, hurt. It was amazing, Sparks thought, how some emotions seemed _designed_ to override all sense of logic and reason.

Oh, how Trinity had told stories in Zion, almost seven months ago, when the One was brand new and half of a ship's compliment had died to get him, when her navy friends couldn't resist asking questions. She told stories of Cypher, the exact opposite of what most people would do, of what even Morpheus did. Morpheus never spoke his name to anyone again. But Trinity couldn't deal with it like that, she had to talk about it, to talk about him.

Cypher had loved her, he'd said. Or rather, _she_ said he'd said. How many of his choices were influenced by that love? How far had knowing that the one who meant everything to him would never, ever give him the time of day pushed him to his choices? All because an oracle inside a simulated reality spat out a prophecy and then told her the prophecy's messiah would have so much more to offer than lowly, pessimistic Cypher? Had it been the last straw or the trigger for the idea in his head?

When he thought about it like that, Sparks wondered if he and Niobe were lucky to be alive around Ghost for so long. The king of unrequited loves himself. And then he closed his eyes and dropped his forehead into one of the keyboards. "Stop it, Sparky, that's not fair...don't you dare think like that, it's _Ghost_ for christ's sake, it's just Ghost."

But he couldn't escape the nagging, wretched feeling that Morpheus had probably felt the same about Cypher for a long time; it was _just_ Cypher.

Opening his eyes, Sparks saw his impromptu self-abuse had changed the readout of one of his screens back to a different location. He blinked, wondering if he was seeing the code correctly. How, in the sea of billions of people he was randomly searching through, had a few random button presses brought him to this spot? Morpheus would have a field day analyzing the providence Sparks had worked up for himself. "Speak of the devil."

His choice was made for him.

~~~

True to Persephone's word, the roof was devoid of anything or anyone with even remotely hostile intentions. Morpheus and Dumont walked with her to the back edge, looking down and confirming that no one was there.

"Where is this man we're going to find?" Dumont asked.

"A few blocks down town, give or take a few buildings," she answered, looking off into the direction of where she wanted to go. "This early in the morning, he'll be eating breakfast at a small diner across from his home by the time we get there."

"We'll find him," Morpheus said. For better or for worse, Persephone was giving off a good vibe...at least for the moment. And he had a feeling he should use her allegiance to his advantage as much as he could. "Persephone, has something happened to the Oracle?"

The Oracle's apartment just wasn't far enough away for him to be unconcerned when the Merovingian's men were this close. Her reaction confirmed that he _should_ be concerned. "I don't know. She's hiding from my husband. We should go."

That answered _that_. Morpheus and Dumont approached the edge on either side of her. She seemed a bit taken aback by this. "Please; just because I can't fight doesn't mean I don't know how to bend the rules."

With that, she sprinted the distance to the end of the rooftop, running across it and leaping the far street to another building. Morpheus and Dumont kept their eyes on her, watching her rise and fall before repeating the process themselves.

It was precisely at this time that Morpheus' phone began ringing. He answered it, fully expecting Link to have something important to say. He did not expect the frantic screaming of Sparks to fill his ear. _"Morpheus, christ, how the hell did you get here, I don't care! I need help!"_

"Sparks," Morpheus spoke slowly, deliberately, purposefully, as Sparks seemed to grow less cohesive by the second. "Calm down. _Calm down._ What's wrong? Where's Niobe?"

"I haven't got a fucking clue, they went to see the Oracle and they've been in that fucking hallway for almost twelve hours and **I can't find them.**"

"Hang on," Morpheus told him. He turned to Persephone. "Is there a door into the access hallways near the Oracle's home?"

Thinking about this, Persephone nodded. But she didn't like where this was going.

Morpheus put his phone back to his ear. "We'll find them." He hung up. "We have to go through that door."

"We do not have time," Persephone insisted, but calmly, collected. "If my husband beats us...you won't like the position you'll be in."

This did not concern Morpheus at all. He had been through many a bad thing and he had defied the odds more times than he could count; it was his most treasured skill. "We won't lose him."

"The others can find him," Dumont added. "Once they're done downstairs. Maybe they'll get done faster than we will."

Realizing that Morpheus would not budge from his spot unless it was to take care of what he considered a more important problem first, Persephone reached into her pocket and retrieved a folded piece of paper, the address she was going to bring them to. "Tell them to go here. We're looking for Mr. Ash."

~~~

Glancing over at the set of occupied chairs, Link turned back to his monitors and the familiar glyphs. Some of them represented familiar _things,_ things he wasn't too particularly thrilled to see. "You've got...okay, most of them are in the middle of the room. There are four guys with code I've never seen, and a pair of twins you don't want to mess with, trust me on this."

"Gotcha." Hanging up his phone, Sark hit the speed dial for a different number.

In a different _elevator,_ Hertz turned her phone on when it rang. "Whatcha' got?"

"Get the guys farther to the left," Sark told her. "We'll get the rest. Watch the twins."

Hertz rolled her eyes and stopped to look at on the floor count. Sometimes, she noticed, Sark could be overly serious. She could tolerate it because he wasn't an idiot; the elevator she was riding on was further to the right and she would have an easier time hitting targets over to the left. "I think I'm behind you guys; this elevator is too damn slow. Just don't start using explosives in enclosed spaces, okay?"

"We'll save some for you," he answered, hanging up. Her final comment inspired him to pat the grenade launcher buckled to the side of his right leg, almost doubting it was still there.

He was quite confident there would be _plenty_ to go around; being severely outnumbered didn't seem like an acceptable handicap for a first real engagement. Nevertheless, he wasn't going to run from any of it, including whatever Link's twins were, unless it was kicking the crap out of him or wearing a perfect suit and dark glasses. Or both.

When he noticed Kid drawing his guns, he turned slightly and said, "You okay?"

"Yep," Kid answered. It was far from the truth, something he made no effort to hide. Kid found himself scared to death, forcing himself to be scared into staying focused and getting the job done as he took a deep breath.

But he couldn't say it, saying it would only make it worse and scare him into being just plain terrified. Shaking his guns loosely in his hands before switching off the safeties and switching on the laser sights, he kept his eyes on the door and mumbled, "Don't over-squeeze the trigger..."

The door finally opened, chiming an obnoxious 'bing' as it did so, much to the surprise of a pale, lanky man standing in front of it, his hand at the button, his mouth open in surprise.

He had a set of fangs not unlike a vampire. He was overdressed in leather pants and an unbuttoned silk shirt, not unlike some interpretations of vampires. He was apparently intent on no longer waiting for Morpheus to come to _him,_ and now that something had happened, he had no clue what to do about it.

Sark punched him, straight in the chest, a clean shot to the solar plexus. He flew back and landed on the ground with a distinct _thud._

This obstruction cleared, the elevator was flooded with green from the large tinted windows in the far wall, flooding in light over the front doors. The lobby had a fairly high ceiling, the left and right walls each home to a pair of calm waterfalls that slid down against green marble into canals, feeding the fountain at the center of the room.

Everyone sitting in the couches and chairs surrounding that fountain turned and looked. To the right was a man with long hair and leather buckles holding the baggier parts of his clothes to his skin; he looked like he had been flirting with the receptionist. The Twins Link had mentioned were _identical_ twins with white hair in dreadlocks, matching sunglasses and perfect white suits. They looked up from their different sections of the same newspaper, each leaning in the opposite direction to see the elevator around the fountain.

Four very large men sat near them, wearing varying levels of body armor, many of them with a bladed weapon of some kind propped against their chairs. One had a paired katana and wakizashi, another had a full-on broadsword.

The men near the door were bulkier than the rest, more feral. Some of them growled.

And then the long-haired fellow looked up from his position, leaning over the receptionist's desk, his eyes traveling from his fallen comrade to the people getting off the elevator. "Hmm, _that's_ not Morpheus."

"Once again, Vlad," one of the twins looked over at him, making no move to stand, "You've completely missed the point."

The other continued reading his paper. "He always misses it; the point is on his head."

Aggravated more by this taunting than the interruption, Vlad looked from Sark to the Twins, then to the fallen vampire, and finally to the bounty hunters sitting down and the werewolves at the door. "Don't just _stand_ there you morons, _get_ them!"

But this encouraged Kid to move faster than it encouraged the exiles, Merovingian lackeys and bounty hunters alike. Half-jumping away from Sark, Kid raised his guns and, focusing on the diluted red dots of his laser sights, opened fire.

The first one he shot at took three bullets before falling through the front doors, shattering the glass as if it didn't fight his fall at all. The second took only two shots, each round disturbing the fountain's spray on the way. The second shot went through his right temple.

He turned his aim to Vlad with the gun in his right hand, shooting once at the third door guard with his left, but before he could squeeze the trigger, Vlad let out an obnoxiously inhuman hiss and leapt into the air, _sticking_ to the high ceiling.

Looking up, Sark couldn't resist speaking the comment on the tip of his tongue. "What are _you_ supposed to be, Spider-Man?"

Abruptly ending his hissing fit, Vlad called down, "You know, the Merovingian would probably want you twerps alive? But I think for once, I'd rather kill you all."

With this declaration, Vlad rocketed down from the ceiling, not merely dropping but shoving himself downward with tremendous force. He almost landed on Kid, but Kid had the sense to shove his guns under his belt in the middle of diving and rolling out of the way.

Almost thrilled over having a direct challenge, Sark did not back off from Vlad and made every effort to get closer to him before blows began being exchanged. But Vlad had other ideas and he backed off, keeping a bigger gap between them. Vlad had a longer reach, a lesson learned when Sark misjudged it and ended up being kicked across the face for his troubles.

He had no help from Kid. Though the bounty hunters were hanging back for the moment, the vampire Sark had walloped had quickly gotten to his feet. The first thing Kid noticed about him was that, like Vlad, he was far more agile than most fighters, and he had a good amount of muscle to say nothing of whatever unnatural strengths he earned by being undead.

But he fought his own offensive, his body tense and resistant to motion. Kid could see it; seeing it was what the entire first Jeet Kune Do lesson had taught him. And the second had taken the concept one step further by showing him how to stay calm and avoid tightening his muscles, how to avoid that same mistake.

It also helped that this man was, if anything, Vlad's underling and nowhere near as good of a fighter. The difference let Kid bend around the first swing his opponent took and easily parry the next two with his forearms, punching the vampire straight in the nose and knocking his head back before taking the chance to kick him square under the chin and into the air.

Kid hopped up after him, his fist raised and ready to strike in the same place Sark had, intent on driving the vampire straight through the marble floor if he could. But the most distracting of noises, the growling, the snarling of an angry animal ruined his focus and as the world came out of its slow motion dance, Kid looked over in time to see the last door guard leap and tackle him to the ground.

And, Kid soon realized, this man was the source of this snarling, a fact proved more disturbing when Kid found his attacker snap his head down and try to bite him on the neck. A hand coming up and grabbing his head, keeping it away, Kid put two and two together; Vlad hissed a lot, his friend had fangs, pale skin, and the classic, stereotyped strength of a vampire. But this one sounded like a rabid dog.

Or a werewolf. It was a lot like a werewolf, or at least, what Kid thought werewolves might be like if they were real.

But then, what _is_ real?

The grating _ding_ from the elevator chimed once more, the doors closer to where the twins sat opening to let Hertz out. The first thing she did was shoot one of the bounty hunters; they were on their feet and moving when they saw her. Then she shot the one carrying the samurai swords.

Then she shot the werewolf on top of Kid, something Kid was grateful for, for it let him shove the prone form off and into one of the waterways before he stood up. The fountain began pouring water with a bit of red in it not long after.

She shot Vlad, but she didn't hit him in the head per her usual accuracy, because he saw it coming _after_ she pulled the trigger and raised a hand, catching the bullet near his elbow in the forearm.

He wasn't fazed and promptly used that forearm to crack Sark across the face, but he had gotten closer to do this and most of Sark's hand to hand technique functioned best at this short distance.

It helped that Sark had no problems playing dirty, either. Before Vlad had committed to a new attack, Sark snapped a leg out and kicked him in the knee. Vlad stumbled once, Sark kicking out again, this time hitting his calf on the same leg before he reached up, dug his fingers into Vlad's face, and raked his eyes.

Even before Sark registered that his fingertips were wet with blood, he was satisfied as Vlad covered his face, bleeding and wailing. Sark kicked him away and decided not to give him a further thought.

Until Vlad's screaming turned into nothing more than bemused laughter and he turned, his eyes fine despite dark lines of blood falling down his cheeks. "I've never shed tears of scarlet for anything; you'll pay for that."

Not making a move, Vlad was content to let the remaining bounty hunters attempt something. Sark dived onto his back when the one wielding the broadsword lunged forward and tried to flat-out impale him.

This gave him a unique angle to watch Hertz hop up _onto_ that sword, surprising the man into holding it there for a second, but Sark quickly rolled to the side and up to his feet as the sword came crashing down.

Already having jumped off, Hertz somersaulted over the swordsman, the end of her gun's silencer pressing onto his head and pivoting with her as she moved.

She pulled the trigger before he knew what was happening, landing behind him as he toppled over.

Intent on killing the last one, Hertz found herself on the receiving end instead; her target flung himself into the air, landing behind her with a piano wire held in his hands, a wire that was soon around her neck.

Seeing Hertz being choked to death, trying desperately to aim her gun behind her head with little success, Kid grabbed one of his guns and raised it, but the original vampire was now standing and running toward him. Before Kid could get a shot off, his arm was knocked away from the target and he was forced to defend himself.

Giving up on her gun, Hertz desperately inhaled what little breath she could, putting all her weight into walking him over a few steps and trying to slam her attacker off by knocking him into the marble wall under one of the waterfalls.

It didn't work. Her eyes starting to turn red, she grabbed one of her throwing knives from under her coat, jabbing over her shoulder and missing completely.

Her attacker smacked her hand into the wall with his head, knocking it out of her hand. She groped for his face, feeling instead the arm of the sunglasses he was wearing.

Instantly coming up with a solution, she pulled the sunglasses from his face by the arm, slamming them into the wall through the water and completely destroying the shades, leaving the broken arm in her hand.

She shoved the broken end through his ear.

He didn't make much noise at this, but instantly, the wire came loose and Hertz fell over, her attacker falling backward, desperately grabbing at the metal now slicked in his own blood, trying to get the foreign object out of his head before it slipped in any farther and killed him.

She raised her other arm and shot him in the head before she even inhaled a breath.

Watching as Vlad almost fell into him from a blow Sark that hit him with, the first twin ruffled through his section of the paper and turned to his brother, his voice bland and utilitarian. "Do we have the funnies?"

"Yes, we do," the second answered in an equally flat tone, finding those pages and handing them over.

Having shot his opponent down, Kid was leaning over her in a prompt manner, afraid she had suffered a serious injury. "Are you alright?"

"I'll be fine," she coughed, rubbing at her neck. A thin red line had formed around it. As she tried to get a handle on things, she grabbed the front of Kid's coat and pulled him down close, reaching over his back to throw a knife through the heart of that persistent vampire.

The unnatural being fell over instantly, his body convulsing as he gagged and slowly died just like that. Intrigued, Hertz raised an eyebrow. "Hey..._that_ killed him."

Helping her to her feet and turning to see Sark fighting with Vlad, Kid added, "You could've just told me to duck."

Her breaths still coming in varying levels of coughing and wheezing, she rasped out, "That's not nearly as fun."

Keeping close, Sark cracked Vlad in the ribs, hoping to break one, but he had no such luck. In retaliation, Vlad grabbed him by the arms, lifted him up and tossed him into the chair one of the bounty hunters had fallen into when Hertz had shot him.

The fragile wood of the furniture shattered under the blow, landing Sark on top of the body. But this didn't concern him; his attention was drawn to the flat end of something sharp he could feel underneath his chest; the katana from the hunter's sword pair. Hearing Vlad's footsteps behind him, he waited just a few second before wrapping his fingers around the handle and bounding to his feet, spinning to face Vlad before he even landed and slicing once with his newfound weapon.

He caught Vlad below the eye. Dabbing his fingers in the fresh blood, Vlad let out a hiss and resolved to tear Sark apart one piece at a time. And Sark taunted him, standing right where he'd landed and scraping a line on the floor with the tip of his sword.

And then Vlad felt his feet leave the ground. Squeaking in surprise, he turned his head to see that Hertz and Kid had both grabbed him from behind.

And as soon as Sark stepped out of the way, they both pulled back and tossed him head first into the fountain, his skull cracking the concrete near the top before he splashed into the basin head-first.

And then, finally, the twins tossed their paper away and stood up. One of them smiled. "That was amusing."

Having had enough of the twins sitting down and looking arrogantly cryptic while they watched the chaos around them, Hertz stepped forward. "So...what _are_ you supposed to be, anyway?"

Looking at each other as if they had never been asked this question, they turned back to her and the one on the left said, "We like to think of ourselves as the Alpha."

"And the Omega," the one on the right added, smiling behind his sunglasses.

Alpha spoke once more. "There is no particular reason."

"We just hate numbers," Omega sighed.

"Yeah, well I hate _you,_" Sark answered them, tucking his sword under his arm. Grabbing his grenade launcher from its straps, he shoved a round into the barrel, closed it and pointed it in their general direction. "Fuck enclosed spaces."

With that, he turned his aim up his aim up, _way_ up, and pulled the trigger, sending the round crashing into the ceiling. And the resulting explosion sent plenty of large debris right down on the twins' heads.

They were more than fast enough to dive away. Just as Sark, Kid and Hertz were more than fast enough to jump over the pile of rubble as soon as it had formed, before the twins were even on their feet.

Looking back from the front doors, they saw that the twins were not the only ones getting up. While the bounty hunters stayed down, Vlad was slowly pulling himself from the fountain and the werewolves were all regaining consciousness, the multitude of bullets in their bodies slowly being squeezed out by their flesh as they regenerated.

"All right, back up," Sark reached up, prodding Kid and Hertz backwards and out the front doors. "Back up."

By the time they were outside and comfortably far away from the building, Sark had reloaded his grenade launcher and was aiming for the top of the door frame, one of the twins visibly running toward him.

But Alpha was too far away, and Sark blew the doors closed long before he was close. People on the street stopped in their tracks and turned towards the sound, their need to know the situation's intimate details far surpassing the thought that running away might be the better option. Only the few people close enough to see that a weapon had caused this explosion either backed away slowly or turned and ran.

"Well, that was that," Sark breathed. Apparently, the Twins weren't going to come out o the windows; if one of them had jumped, they would have crashed through already.

And as Sark began walking away, Hertz following, with Kid about to bring up the rear, Alpha came soaring _through_ the debris in a running dive, but he was different, transparent and ghostly instead of bright white, even the razor blade in his hand immaterial like air.

He solidified in mid-dive, rolling once and coming up on his feet, his blade swinging in the air at Kid.

Still trying to process this development, Kid reacted on complete reflex, grabbing Alpha's forearm and shoving down, sending him into the air with his own momentum. But Alpha was not caught off guard by this, and he landed on his feet, behind Kid, his arm swinging up with Kid's until the blade was at his throat above his collar, and Kid's hand was no longer catching someone as they grew close but trying to pull his own death _away_. Alpha's other arm encircled him, keeping Kid's own free arm pinned to his side.

And all of this, Alpha noticed, happened in the time that it took Sark and Hertz to turn around and see. He was amused. "Leaving so soon?"

Omega then phased through the rubble, his pace a calm walk. "Maybe we'll get it right this time."

"Drop your weapons," Alpha deadpanned, his blade drawing blood from Kid.

Kid kept his eyes on a random cloud in the green-tinted sky, not wanting to look at his companions, having discovered that trying to pull the knife away from his neck with all of his might resulted in Alpha not budging at all. He was afraid they could tell what he was thinking, that the last thing he wanted was for them to surrender and die for him while he prayed that they would do just that.

For the first time, he wished he'd found himself a new pair of sunglasses. And then the sound that reached his ears, an all-too familiar noise heard elsewhere in the only non-combat training simulation Morpheus had put them through forced him to shift his eyes back down, to something behind Sark and Hertz.

They heard it too, and they whirled around, their weapons still, mercifully, in their hands. People had gathered around them instead of running away, on both sides of the sidewalk and in empty parking spaces along the street, watching the train wreck instead of running from it. Perhaps they thought it was a gang fight spilling into public or something else that didn't really _involve_ them and therefore couldn't _harm_ them.

But that sound was an Agent taking one of them, the baggy clothes of a young man excited over his front seat to the action turning into the crisp dark suit worn by a man with a much larger stature and a face showing less emotion than the twins did.

Before anyone reacted, Agent Johnson pulled his gun out from under his coat, and Sark could see down the barrel as he pulled the trigger.

Sark thought he was quite dead when he saw the muzzle flash, the sound drowned out by this realization, the bullet...skimming the side of his face, whipping by his hair, finding its mark next to Kid's head, in Alpha's eye.

His form turning immaterial, razor and all, Alpha lunged forward and grabbed for Kid as soon as he had slipped through his fingers, but Kid was long gone, toward his companions, long before Alpha was solid again.

That single shot had finally gotten the crowd to panic and it sent people running every which way, before anyone would have noticed Alpha's ghostly form or the bullet hitting the poor sap who'd been standing _behind_ him.

All of this left the three humans in an interesting position; between the twins and an Agent.

"Come with me," Johnson intoned, backing up with his gun still pointed at the twins.

Kid and Hertz shared a look of surprised horror, turning to Johnson as he walked away and then to Sark as he backed up, his hands tightening around his weapons.

Regardless of the Agent's intentions, he was one possible threat and not completely invulnerable; the twins were two _definite_ threats with no visible weakness. The logic involved in making a decision seemed quite obvious to Sark. "_Go,_ for Christ's sake!"

The twins were on him then, first Alpha slashing a razor at his face. He stepped back, leaning in to crack the ghoul with the barrel of his grenade launcher, a swipe that missed completely when Alpha ducked his head underneath and slashed at his throat.

Having caught on to their game and idiosyncrasies, Sark made no attempt to get out of the way; instead, he stabbed Alpha through the chest with his sword, not even feeling the blade when Alpha turned immaterial and it passed through him. He kicked Omega back, slashing horizontally at them both, this time trying to actually do damage and failing completely as they phased for the small amounts of time they had metal passing through them.

Smacking away Alpha's weapon arm only to be punched back and smashed to the ground, Sark kicked a leg up and caught Omega in the stomach, reaching up and hitting hard across the forehead with the barrel of his grenade launcher. But his swing was at the wrong angle to follow through with catching Alpha's kick from hitting him across the jaw and sending him rolling onto his face.

Agent Johnson, hopping over the hood of a black car and opening the driver's side door in one precise, if completely ungraceful movement, hastily gestured to the humans. "Get in."

This statement had the effect of stopping Hertz and Kid in their tracks. It wasn't bad enough that an Agent was offering them a _ride_ instead of trying to kill them, but on top of which, the Agent didn't seem to realize just why they were so reluctant.

Alpha proceeded to plant a foot on Sark's back, pressing down into the sidewalk almost hard enough to kill him, but not quite, not yet.

Responding in due kind, Sark turned his grenade launcher up, twisting his wrist almost as far as it would go, the barrel pointed at Alpha's head.

Of course, munitions going off that close would most likely kill him, but he pulled the trigger anyway.

And Alpha heard the metal tang of its firing mechanism clicking, his body phasing into the freakish wraith form he and his brother so enjoyed...but no grenade came.

  
Sark had never reloaded it. In desperation, he had hoped the twins' abilities were a matter of choice, that they _choose_ to become immaterial, not an automatic response to injury.

Alpha had good reflexes. But he didn't catch his mistake before Sark rolled out from underneath him, breaking into a run as soon as he was on his feet, glass above the hotel doors shattering as the werewolves began leaping through.

And on the _Caduceus,_ Link had a moment to reflect on the stupidity he had let himself fall into. It had seemed appropriate to consider this grand new assignment not a good thing, but at least a tolerable thing. After all, the war was over, why should one expect the same level of insanity to be perpetuated into the new era?

"What in the world are they _doing?_"

At this very moment, Sark was batting away at the twins as best he could, ramming his sword through a werewolf's heart when it was foolish enough to leap at him while his face wasn't turned away.

Ripping the blade out, he slashed it through Alpha, warm blood gliding through the air when Alpha phased through it once more. Only this time, the wraith didn't solidify right away, he stayed immaterial and passed clean through Sark, reforming to backhand him across the face as Sark tried to turn around.

He had intended to knock Sark into Omega, but Omega's blade turned light as air when Sark managed to stab him first.

Cut off from his preferred escape, Sark didn't think about his options; he turned and ran, out onto the street, first hopping onto a parked car and then across several moving vehicles until he was at the other side, his movement never ceasing as he ran down the closest ally.

Venturing a quick look behind himself, he found that the twins were leaping over the entire _street_ after him, taking only one jump. "Figures it's the one thing I _should've_ learned better..."

It wasn't just his own people Link was blinking at while they stayed _disturbingly_ close to an Agent. Staring at the code, he couldn't help but wonder why the Agent wasn't trying to _kill_ them. Kid was the least busy, with no good shot out the back window at the pursuers who thought they would stop them from driving away, while Johnson, knowing Sark was long gone, peeled out into the road.

As such, Kid was the one who found his phone ringing. He answered it promptly. "Yeah?"

Link repeated the question he had asked himself. "What in the _world_ are you _doing!_"

"Uh," Kid started, wondering what the answer was himself. As Agent Johnson turned onto the street, he and Hertz threw themselves down as much as they could when gunfire started bouncing off of the car. Looking back, seeing that the twins had given up their pursuit of Sark in favor of getting a vehicle of their own, he knocked out the back window with his elbow. It allowed for proper aiming and he returned fire before ducking down once more and bringing the phone back to his ear. He couldn't help but wonder if this was the same kind of craziness Sparks had described to him in his many stories about Niobe and Ghost. It certainly seemed like it. "We're running like pansies?"

"With an _Agent,_" Link half-shouted, half-squeaked at him.

Again ducking his head, Kid briefly thought of shooting the cars in _front_ of them; they were digging their own grave by plowing through traffic and leaving a clear road for the twins to gain on them from their bad start as commuters swerved away left and right.

Johnson seemed to realize this, and acted by taking a hard left turn.

"Yeah," Kid shouted back once he was done listening to Sark, his voice nearly drowned out by the incoming gunfire and the sounds of various car horns going off as Johnson plowed around traffic in decidedly dangerous ways. "We're more afraid of the ghosts than him..."

Muting the line for a moment, Link looked up at the ceiling and rubbed imaginarily sleep out of his eyes. "Ah, well, if you can't beat 'em," he said to himself. Going back to his monitors, he realized that this might turn into the freeway all over again if it wasn't nipped in the bud. There were no cops approaching, something he couldn't quite comprehend, but some of the Merovingian's other goons had gone through the process of hijacking cars and joining the pursuit.

"Link," Kid reached out and shot at the twins again; he and Hertz had the same idea, they were both trying to hit the one leaning out of the passenger window shooting at them, hoping to force him into phasing and dropping his gun. But the twin driving was very good at being evasive. "Where do we go?"

Having been working on this, Link did not bother answering and instead put all of his effort into finding the clearest route they were coming up on. "Turn left at the next intersection, then go straight and take the next right."

"Go left," Kid shouted up front, _praying_ the Agent would listen to him.

Perhaps miraculously, Agent Johnson took the turn.

And this particular street was indeed less cluttered; Johnson had a near-straight run to the end, a fact he used to his advantage. The twins turned onto the street to find a much larger gap between themselves and their targets.

Link was not entirely amused when a second call came through; he didn't want to divert his attention away from the growing catastrophe. But then, it wasn't really his choice. He switched lines and answered the phone. "Operator."

"Link," Morpheus spoke. "Where are the others?"

"Running their asses off," Link almost chuckled, restraining himself. He also restrained himself from telling Morpheus about the Agent and the fun they seemed to be having with _that_. "They're heading towards Chinatown."

"We're heading into the hallways," Morpheus answered back. "They need to find a diner on East 21st. We're looking for a man named Ash."

"Gotcha," Link answered. Morpheus hung up, leaving him to go back to Kid. "Okay, you're going the wrong way. You want to go a few miles south," he paused, finding the information on their objective. "There's a diner called 'The World is Yours' near the end of the street; find Ash."

"Right, okay," Kid hung up. He learned forward, as close to the front as he dared. "Turn around, we need to go back."

"Yes," Agent Johnson answered, taking a right turn and running down and winding down a hilled, curved road. He made no attempts to actually reverse direction; the twins had gained on them again, close enough to resume fire, and Vlad was close behind them. "Our objectives are identical."

"So why have you been going the _wrong way_ from the start?" Hertz asked.

Unperturbed, Johnson answered, "It has been the only viable escape route. You can do nothing if you are dead."

~~~

Phone at his ear, Sark turned around and walked backwards for a few steps, making sure the twins weren't three feet behind him while trying to somehow look inconspicuous. Buckling his grenade launcher back to his leg, where it was covered by his duster, was the only thing he had done to accomplish this, and given the fresh bruises and cuts he'd gotten from the twins and Vlad, it didn't help much.

He wasn't making any attempt to hide the sword at all, letting the tip scrape on the ground as he walked. It was a lifeline, a ground to reality, ironic considering there was no reality here at all. Nevertheless, it had kept Vlad and the twins at bay longer than he thought it would, and as such, his knuckles were white while he held the handle.

His face now had a black eye that would likely be there when he jacked out, added to the rest of the beating he'd gotten in Zion. Once he had lost the adrenaline high from his first real brawl, it became apparent that this was the least of his worries. One of the twins' razors had sliced a line clean down the front of his shirt, nearly cutting off his ammo sash and, for that matter, nearly cutting into his _skin._ He was going to feel all of it in the morning, he was sure.

It seemed like an eternity before Link answered the phone. "Operator."

"Where the hell am I going?"

Being good at his job, Link answered quickly. "There's a bus stop just down that street, sit there, try to look normal, I'll send the others down there to pick you up on their way."

"Works for me," Sark hung up, plodding over to the wooden bench constituting this bus stop and sitting down, tossing the sword to the ground behind it. He didn't keep track of time, instead slumping back and closing his eyes, trying to take a full breath, anything to postpone the inevitable. When he finally let his eyelids open half-way, his upward-staring gaze noticed something he hadn't given any thought to before. "Since when is the sky here _blue?_ God, I hate this shit..."

"So maybe you shouldn't be here."

Jumping, Sark turned to his side. He hadn't stopped _listening,_ he wasn't stupid enough to stop paying attention to his surroundings, and he was quite sure he _should've_ heard this odd woman approach. But he didn't, and here she was, sitting down on the other end of the bench. "Sorry about that."

It was too weird. She _looked_ normal enough, wearing a little smoking jacket over a faded flower skirt. Her hair was graying, her age well into the fifties. In one hand, she held a purse that she set down on the bench as she sat; her other hand held a pack of cigarettes displaying the Double Destiny brand logo.

After noticing the yin-yang earrings she sported, Sark thought about them long enough to see that both halves were the same color before he pulled a double take back to the cigarettes. Still, his response was a simple, confused, "What?"

"Maybe you shouldn't be here," she repeated. "If you don't like whatever it is you're doing, I mean. Most people don't realize how much choice they have in the matter of doing things they don't want to be doing."

He remained silent: silent, nervous, and more than a little crept out. Was she just talking typical old lady-talk, or...

"Lovely day, isn't it?" She asked.

Very weird, indeed. Why, Sark thought, didn't he _scare_ her? He was a young man with visible cuts and bruises from fighting other people (or reasonable facsimiles of other people) and she _must've_ seen the not-well-hidden sword before she sat down. He was the spitting image of someone who was given a wide berth by old people. Sark shook his head, because the simulated sun and cloudless sky showing the green, no, the _blue_ above _couldn't_ be lovely to an unplugged man just coming back to the Matrix. "No, not really."

"I suppose I can't help but appreciate it anyway, though," she sighed. "So, you must be Sark."

"Excuse me?" He stared at her agape, an utter lack of comprehension prompting him to reach under his duster and finger the buckles around his grenade launcher. "How the hell do you know that?"

"Another dim bulb when you've got too much on your mind, but that's alright. Anyway, I know enough." Unperturbed, she took another drag from her cigarette and dug through her purse again, finding an open bag of candy. Unrolling the top, she snagged a little red bite. The way she held it reminded him quite well of being presented with something that looked a lot like it years ago. "I'd offer you one, but you don't want it. You didn't expect to be fighting anything, or at least not this soon, and you're still trying to make sense of it."

He hadn't. But Sark wasn't going to say this. Glancing down both ends of the street, praying for that Agent, of all things, to hurry up and get here so he could _leave_, he sighed. "Yeah, well, life is like a Windows box, you never know when it's gonna crash."

"You remind me of Morpheus." She took a drag from her cigarette. "He was pretty skeptical and bothered the first time I met him, I remember that much."

The most pertinent question would have been 'how do you know Morpheus?' Somewhere in his mind, Sark knew that as he yanked off his sunglasses, but her statement had driven him up the wall and away from asking questions, to a pool of rage he didn't know he had stored up.

After all, he'd never expected to hear anyone say that. The small amount of tolerance Morpheus had earned from Sark in the council chambers was gone in an instant, forgotten in a burst of anger. "I am _nothing_ like Morpheus!"

"Really?" She raised an eyebrow. For a second, it looked as if she had eyes his sword on the ground. "Well, Morpheus doesn't have the baggage you do, but then, no one is _exactly_ alike. Even _we_ aren't."

Rage now mixed with buried grief, Sark's voice, though much less belligerent, grew thicker with anger. "Lady, you have _no fucking idea_ what 'baggage' I have."

"Sure I do," she ate another piece of candy, dropping the bag back into her purse. "I know you don't like it, you _shouldn't._ But we're all here to do what we're all here to do, and I don't think you realize _why_ you're here."

No longer caring if this was some weird old woman going senile or if he was completely missing something, Sark stood up and looked down on her. Right now, this woman was the vilest thing in the Matrix. "I suppose you're going to tell me why?"

"Oh, no, not a bit," she shook her head, almost laughing. Almost. "I don't do that, I just make an observation here and there. You just have to make up your _own_ damn mind about it. So, how's your brother?"

"He's fine," Sark deadpanned. He didn't like what she might be getting at. Crom _was_ fine, he had to be. What was going happen to him in Zion, after all?

Finishing her cigarette, the woman tossed it away and proposed what sounded like a pretty stupid question. "Do you think he'd be fine if he were here?"

"Of _course_ not," Sark shouted, earning more looks from people passing by than he had even while carrying a sword around. It was almost amusing. Growing self conscious over his outburst, Sark lowered his voice, but it contained the same level of bite. "Like _hell_ he'd be fine in here...Morpheus would just get him killed."

"But not you," she said.

"I...what?" Sark looked down, trying to make sense of that. What was she trying to get at?

"Not you. Morpheus trusted you with a dangerous job on your very first day, and you not only pulled it off, you lived to tell about it, right?"

Feeling the fresh pain from his bruises again, Sark nodded, almost whispering. "Yeah..."

"Bingo," she raised a finger. Standing up, she added, "I'd say Morpheus and Link did a pretty good job teaching you how to kick ass with so little time to do it."

Ugh, would you **shut up,** he thought, groaning and letting the back of his head _thunk_ off the back of the bench. In the real world, his data port would've clanged off of it and sent the most obnoxious reverberation through his skull.

She stood on the curb, watching the bus work its way down the street. And Sark just stared at her, finally looking at the bus before it arrived, the mere sight of this woman giving him a headache at this point.

And then he realized something; this woman wasn't odd, she was _scheming_. Or maybe not scheming, but clearly, there was something more going on with her than met the eye. Why was he _letting her go?_ Even if she was pissing him off to no end, Sark realized he shouldn't let that get in the way of getting more information.

So, finding a five dollar bill in the wallet automatically added to his RSI and tucking his sword under his duster, holding the coat closed to keep it there, he followed her onto the bus.

He equally followed her to the back seats where no one was sitting. The woman never paused, never hesitated, as if she had known Sark would follow her and knew what part of the bus would be private before she'd stepped on.

He didn't sit down, he couldn't while hiding his sword. But he stood next to her as the bus pulled out, his phone ringing. Link was probably having a fit (or a coronary,) but he didn't answer it. "Who _are_ you?"

"You'll figure that out," she answered, her face still stuck with an expression of contentment. The bus pulled out, heading further away from the center of the city.

Completely baffled and running into a dead end, Sark glanced out the windows to help himself think. He couldn't ask anything that would get a direct answer from her, so it seemed futile to try.

Looking out the window, in turn, made it apparent that he had failed to notice something besides the sky was off. Or different in some way. The cityscape had everything it should, buildings, more buildings, people, cars, but between buildings and through the occasional park were things that shouldn't be there. In the more densely populated areas stood buildings higher and larger than anything he had ever seen, than anything he had ever _heard_ of. Off in the distance, he could see train or monorail tracks snaking around the giant structures, leading up into them or down back into the city proper. "What the hell?"

"You're going to want to get off soon," the woman said. "As soon as we hit the suburbs."

"And why is that?" Sark answered. "Why do you think you know all of...this..."

Revelation dawning in his eyes, Sark put the pieces together. She knew things. She knew things without asking, she knew when things would happen, and she knew where people would _be_ if the bus stop was any indication. At least, she apparently liked to _think_ she knew these things.

"Finally got it?" She smiled.

Turning to look out the front windshield, Sark closed his eyes and brushed his thumb under the bruised one, finding the pain a great deal lessened than the last time he had thought about it. "You're the Oracle."

She nodded. "Not what you were expecting?"

Sark's answer was not an answer to her question, though it didn't have the rudeness it might have had if he'd the woman even a month ago. He simply stated fact. "I don't believe in you."

"I know," the Oracle nodded. "You never have."

Letting out a low, half-malicious snarl, he turned away. "Man, I got on the wrong bus..."

"Oh, Sark?"

"What?" He sighed, wondering what she could want _now,_ what else that she could _possibly_ say to shake him more? Who the hell was _she_ to do this to him?

"Humor an absent-minded lady; what's your name?" At the look he shot her, she added, "Before the real world. Y'know, that meaningless name from those coppertop parents the machines decided would end up with you when they plucked you from the fields?"

This question only served to make him _angrier_. But, resigned to the torture of bad memories she had brought up at the bus stop, he couldn't find the strength to snap at her. "Josh."

"Josh, or Joshua?" She asked.

She wasn't saying it right; an English accent changed it a little and he had enough pride to hold people to that. But he didn't have the strength for it right now. "Joshua."

"Well, take care, Joshua," she said. "I think you'll figure out why you're here."

Sark looked at her for what felt like a pretty long time as the bus stopped and she stood up to leave, talking only before she was gone out the back door. "Why do you care?"

"Like I said," she smiled, pausing on the steps, "We're all here to do what we're all here to do. You can either shed your blood on the altar of the world or you can pay attention to the people who care about you. Even Morpheus does, you know."

Sark said nothing as he watched the buildings fly by.

~~~

"The door is just around this…corner?"

Seeing what looked to be the backsides of two human-shaped metal...objects, Dumont felt a need to make some sort of comment about it, considering the things were big enough to completely block the corridor. "Now that's something you don't see everyday."

Already formulating theories on what this meant, Morpheus began walking toward the giants. A few steps closer and it was obvious that these machinations were not going to respond to them, as he was not silent and they stayed put nonetheless. A few steps more and he could make out moving things through the cracks in their forms, mostly between the arms and torsos. There was what appeared to be someone pacing from left to right, and a sliver of glistening red closer to the floor. "Niobe?"

To his comfort, the voice that called back was, indeed, Niobe's. "Morpheus? You have _no idea_ how glad I am to see you."

Not content with simply speaking, Niobe hauled herself up on the golems, propping her elbow on one of their shoulders and dropping her head into her hand. She looked tired once she took her sunglasses off, dark circles under bloodshot eyes told Morpheus that Sparks' hadn't been kidding when he said they'd been jacked in too long. Nevertheless, she was not diminished by it. "_Tell_ me you have some idea of how to get us out of here?"

"They won't move without my husband's orders," Persephone frowned. Clearly, she had not expected this, and apparently it was going to end up being a big obstacle. "They're foolish like that."

Shaking her head and rolling her eyes, Niobe growled in Persephone's general direction. "Don't _you_ even _start_ talking."

Looking through the cracks in the blockade around the golems' arms and legs, Dumont grew fixated to the doors on Niobe's side. Obviously, whoever had brought her here didn't have a key to any of them. Persephone likely didn't have one either, or she would have suggested it already. "I'm going to guess you don't have keys to those doors?"

When she shook her head, Dumont pressed her for further information. "How do they work, anyway? Does the lock read something on the key and open it into here?"

"No," she answered. "The tumblers in the lock have two positions; one opens the door one way, the other opens it here."

Considering her words, he asked, "Can we find a door in the Matrix that leads to one of those?"

Seeing him point to the golems and the doors they blocked, Persephone said, "I told you, I don't have keys for any of them."

"Work with me," Dumont thought on the idea that had crawled its way into his head. It was so simple it might just work. "I've got an idea."

He looked at Morpheus; Morpheus nodded, and they both looked at Persephone. She was quick to turn around and walk away. "Follow me."

It took Persephone just over five minutes to lead them through the hallway to a random door, and then through the Matrix, only to return to the hallway so they could go through _another_ door that put them near an objective.

The door was on the front porch of a house in the city's residential area. This became a possible issue when Dumont, having kept tools for something like this in his jacket pocket, crouched onto one knee and began picking the lock. Nevertheless, Morpheus was not concerned.

But Persephone was. "I'm not sure this will work."

"Well, we're going to find out," he answered, never turning away from the doorknob or his small tools, most of which would look like small pieces of bent metal to other people.

Morpheus, on the other hand, was unsure for different reasons. "How do you know which combination is the right one?"

"I don't," Dumont chuckled. "But if I get it open...oh, like I just did now, and it doesn't open into that corridor..."

He opened the door, and it opened...into the house, as the owner, a woman in her thirties with a cordless phone held to her ear happened to be walking between rooms.

She stared at them and dropped the phone.

Dumont closed the door and went back to work, vague noises of that poor woman scrambling to pick up her phone and likely dial 911 coming through. "So, yeah, now I just find the _other_ way it opens..."

Less than a minute later, the lock clicked open again, Dumont's lock picks in a substantially different position then they had been the first time. Holding his breath, he turned the knob and pushed on the door, and this time, it opened to Niobe, Ghost and Seraph inside the Industrial Hallway, the golems still unmoving.

While Seraph and, to a lesser extent, Niobe had been pacing in their allotted space, Ghost was sitting on the floor, apparently meditating from his relaxed posture and closed eyes despite the complete lack of a proper sitting position. Even so, he was just as fast as the other two in terms of how long it took him to hurry out the door.

"Thank you," Niobe groaned, putting her sunglasses back on once the sun hit her eyes.

Ghost, for all of his apparent relaxation, looked no better than his captain. "Sparks has probably had a heart attack by now."

"He has," Morpheus nodded. "Possibly several."

The only one of them to look perfectly normal, Seraph seemed a little impatient. "We must go. I must take you to your destination."

"We have to call our Operator," Ghost argued. Sparks really didn't deserve the stress.

"Very well, but I must still bring you to the door," Seraph answered. He wasn't going to take 'no' for answer. With a shrug, Niobe and Ghost followed him when he followed Persephone back to the door they had gotten here through.

And everyone ended up following Persephone like a school field trip down the sidewalk, until a bus pulled up next to the curb and stopped. This wouldn't have been a noteworthy occurrence, except for the fact that the only one to get off of it was familiar to everyone.

Even Morpheus was surprised. "Sark?"

Finally carrying his sword normally for the sake of letting the feeling in the arm he was using to hold it under his coat return, Sark looked around at all of them. "The Oracle said I should get off here."

"Oh boy," Niobe let out with a breath. In earlier days, this would have been a comment directed at Morpheus' propensity to jump at any sentence with the word 'Oracle' in it and get people killed. Nowadays, it still carried this meaning. But as a neophyte believer, Niobe also meant it as a verbalization of the fact that she _acknowledged_ the impending doom, whatever it may be, as a necessary evil for them to get where they were going.

Seeing available time in this delay, Ghost pulled his phone and called Sparks.

From the fearful tone of his voice, Sparks was either hoping for good news or he had _seen_ the good news on his monitors and wasn't holding his breath until he heard one of them talk. "Operator?"

"Sparks, we're out."

"Well, christ-on-a-cracker!" Sparks shouted through his headset, "You guys are unbe-fucking-leavable! Where the hell have you been! Why the hell were you there!"

"We were locked in the hallway," Ghost answered, his tone not changing. "What have you stuck us with?"

Looking up at the prone forms in the chairs he had avoided glancing at for awhile, Sparks answered, "Food tubes, saline drips. The usual for overexposure."

"Thanks," Ghost said back. At least he and Niobe wouldn't be anything but tired and sore when they jacked out.

Remembering that breathing was his friend, Sparks tried to calm himself down.

He stopped trying when a distinct thumping sound echoed in the _Logos,_ as if something had fell on it. It couldn't have been a squiddy, because the proximity alarms would've gone nuts. "Ghost, I'll have to get back to you, the sky is falling."

Hanging up, Sparks gently slipped off his headset and walked to the front of the ship. About to begin an actual search, he took a plasma rifle from the weapons locker, just in case. Things making bumping sounds were often the tell-tale sign of death in those Matrix horror movies, he remembered.

Rifle on and checked for a full charge, he crept over to the main hatch and felt a draft. The snow had stopped outside, but he only knew this because the hatch was cracked open, just enough to see outside.

It was possible the wind was responsible for this. Doors on ships weren't made for surface weather and were probably a little vulnerable to it. But Sparks still held onto his gun as he reached over and pulled it shut.

Hopefully, it was just the wind. This _was_ the real world, after all. Sparks couldn't help but find it amusing that he was being paranoid over silly Matrix myths; maybe Kid could tell him if any of those things were remotely realistic.

But in true Matrix fashion, when Sparks turned around, gun lowered, his guard down, he found that truth was much stranger than fiction.

He found that he was not alone, and he found that he _knew_ the intruder, the very familiar and very _human_ intruder in the _Logos_ who was now standing not five feet in front of him. For an instant, he swore his heart had stopped. "Bane...?"

Acting the moment Sparks began raising his gun, Bane lunged forward and tore it from his hands, slamming the butt of it into his chest and knocking him back against the hatch he had just closed.

Dropping the gun, Bane grabbed Sparks by the neck and slammed him back into the metal door as he tried to escape, squeezing as hard as he felt he could without killing him yet. "So _you're_ the little insignificant fleshling that chattered in their ears the whole time, telling them where to go just to get away from me? Yes, he remembers you, sordid little punk that you were."

"What...what are you," Sparks coughed out, his lungs heaving in their attempts to inhale. How could Bane _not_ know him? Sparks had started on the _Caduceus_ after him and while Clotho hadn't exactly been friendly then, Bane had always been the crew's social animal and he was quite easily to get along with. Before he lost it. "What are you talking about?"

But Bane didn't seem to care about his response. "You have no idea how _humiliating_ that was, to be so powerful, and being dodged by _humans_ who know just where to go because of their highly skilled little Operator. The last poor Operator I saw was nowhere near that annoying, so...I think I'll be a lot more satisfied by slitting _your_ throat."

No longer paying attention to Bane's ramblings, Sparks desperately tried to think of a way out. Desperation was his key, for it invoked the idea of taking desperate measures and he did this in earnest, bringing a knee up and slamming it right into Bane's crotch.

Surprised, Bane let go and Sparks shoved him to the floor and tried to run, but Bane grabbed his ankle and yanked him down, shoving him onto his back and pinning him their. Sparks couldn't see Bane's other hand, and he took some small satisfaction in the fact that it was probably grasping at something very sensitive that was hurtling _a lot_ right now.

"Oh, _that's_ new," Bane snarled, "I knew that would hurt, of course, though it seemed rather...pointless...to inflict this particular injury on myself."

Looking into Bane's eyes, hearing him speak, Sparks suddenly stopped thinking about his predicament; it wasn't _Bane._ It was, but it wasn't. He could just barely put his finger on it.

This was not the reputable handgun expert with an outspoken, if un-energetic belief in the One that Sparks had guided through the Matrix on many occasions. His body language gave it away the most. Even his speech was different, clipped and succinct, almost like a machine. And the look in his eyes wasn't what happened to a man gone over the edge, it was someone else entirely.

Sparks didn't have much time to ponder his. He wanted more than anything to be sitting in his chair, checking on his crew. Right now, the code would have told him that Persephone and Seraph were leading them all at a special door in a burned-out floor of a tall building.

But Bane had entirely different ideas. When Sparks saw that other hand again, he wished his original idea had been correct; it wasn't. Bane had retrieved a knife he'd had hidden away. And Bane was intent on using it. "Please, enjoy the...consequences...of your mortality."

Sparks didn't feel the knife go in, or at the very least, he didn't feel it as pain. It shook his entire body and he felt _that_, he felt his hands give up and no longer provide resistance against Bane's weight holding him to the floor, he felt his eyes go wide and his mouth hang open to say nothing. He felt blood flow and saturate the fabric of his clothes while the blade sank deeper and the hilt followed as much as Bane dared to push it without loosing his grip.

Sparks didn't look down but he could imagine the stain spreading out. From where it started, it seemed like Bane had stabbed him higher than the abdomen, defiantly to the side...and pretty high up, actually. It stayed that high when Bane moved, ripping the blade to the side without pulling it up at all.

In fact, the knife had gone between ribs and Sparks felt short of breath. He'd probably hit a lung. With this revelation came the realization for Sparks that this was quite simply, quite _entirely_ the way his world would end; with a hole in his chest and blood in his throat. He was going to die and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

And Bane knew it too.

Perhaps just because he _could,_ Bane picked Sparks up by his shirt after removing his weapon, heaving the limp Operator up as he kicked the hatch open.

Still conscious, Sparks couldn't accept his fate. At the very least, he wanted his dying breath to try to fix that. It wasn't much of a breath and he barely managed to whisper a single question. "Who...what are...?"

"I'm," Bane considered, pausing. He tossed Sparks away, through the hatch, facedown into the snow outside. Bane raised his voice and finished his answer. "The _inevitable._"

Trying to at least prop himself up on his hands, Sparks fell right back down, and when he did, his arms wouldn't even move anymore, resigning him to a cold death as well as a sudden, pointless one. An old comrade had stabbed him and tossed him away like garbage, and so, that was what he felt like.

Facedown in the snow, Sparks felt warmth spreading under him from where his blood ran.

He could smell it.

~~~

Persephone did not follow them through the door, remaining only to see them all off before closing it. Seraph, on the other hand, briskly led the group around he tattered remains of infrastructure they now stood in, and Morpheus recognized this place almost instantly.

"The door to the Source was here," he said.

"It still is," Seraph answered, finding a key on the ring he kept inside his sleeve.

Morpheus didn't understand this, and he made no attempt to ignore the things that didn't make sense. "The Keymaker said the connection would be changed if it becomes vulnerable."

"It makes this place," Seraph answered, stopping at the last door and placing his key in the lock, "The last place anyone would look."

"And you trust Persephone with that secret," Morpheus spoke, no hint of a question in his tone.

"Yes," Seraph nodded.

He turned the key and opened the door. There was no extravaganza in the act, no bright lights or obvious indication that this door was different from any other inside the Matrix or even in the real world. It was not the walk into a false Valhalla that Morpheus had been so sure Neo had seen.

How anti-climactic it must've been for Neo to open this door...

~~~

Time passed, Sparks didn't notice how long, but it couldn't have been _that _long, he knew, because he wasn't going to live much longer. Something blue was floating around at the edge of his blurring vision, up at the sky, very likely a hallucination. It was rather mechanical, actually; pretty machine-like as far as lights went.

He closed his eyes willingly, numb either from blood loss or the cold or both, thinking the horrible thought that Bane had likely pulled Ghost and Niobe's plugs by now. He prayed, he _wished_ Bane would jack in, would try to fuck with somebody only to get a bullet in his head, preferably from Kid.

Kid would make a great avenging angel, he thought. His coat was dramatic enough for it. And his emotions were _fragile_ enough for it, especially if they really _did_ mean anything to each other. Sparks thought they did, anyway. And right now, he refused to deny himself the simple pleasure of being certain. At the same time, Sparks found distress in this, because Kid didn't deserve what he would go through when he found out what Bane had done.

It made Sparks wish all the more that Kid would be the one to kill him; with help from Morpheus for Niobe's sake, and that would have to carry over to Ghost because Trinity was gone and she couldn't do much avenging_._ Sparks wished he could look at his screens one more time and find Kid, the code so ingrained in Sparks' head that seeing it would be just as good as seeing him in person.

Trying to open his eyes again, Sparks suddenly found the idea of seeing the snow calming enough for it to be preferable over dying in darkness. And maybe that funny blue light would still be there. But no matter how hard he tried, even his eyelids stopped obeying him.

Soon after, he could try no more.

~ * ~ * ~

Translations

comment vous attendez-vous à ce que je travaille dans de telles conditions? - _how do you expect me to work under such conditions?_

References

-"The Waster to Destroy" is from Isaiah 54:16, the verse on Smith's license plate at the beginning of _Reloaded._

-Hertz and the sunglasses-attack-of-_death_ is from Noir.

Quotes

-"God is in his Heaven. All is right with the world." ---_Neon Genesis Evangelion_

-"It's...it is, um...it's...it is _green_." ---_Star Trek: The Next Generation_

-"Shed...blood...on the altar of the world." ---_Legacy of Kain_


End file.
